The Lay Vocation
The lay vocation is the unique calling of the baptised who are not ordained clergy or members of religious life.
Baptism
Through Baptism, the lay faithful belong fully to Christ. They are entrusted with a distinctive mission: to seek the Kingdom of God in the world and to help order temporal realities according to God’s Will.
As lay faithful, we are united to Christ and share, in our own particular way, in His priestly, prophetic and kingly mission. We are called to holiness, to witness, and to participate in Christ’s mission on earth, especially within the ordinary circumstances of life.
What is distinctive about the lay vocation is its place in the world. We are called to seek the Kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and ordering them according to the plan of God. Work, family, relationships, culture, society, public responsibility and daily decisions are all places where we, as the lay faithful, are called to serve Christ and bear witness to Him.
The lay person is therefore not called to leave the world, but to serve Christ within it. The world is not merely the background of lay life; it is the field in which we are sent to help renew the temporal order, guided, strengthened and empowered by the Holy Spirit. We begin by directing our thoughts and activities towards God, first and foremost.
This is why the lay vocation matters. It gives meaning to ordinary responsibility. It reveals that daily life can become a place of service, witness and apostolic action. The life God has entrusted to you is not accidental. Your life circumstances are the concrete field in which you love and serve God, and grow in holiness.
The lay vocation is the call to live and act as someone who belongs to Christ and is a member of the Church. Whatever your age, background, profession, level of responsibility or influence, as a baptised you are first and foremost a disciple of Christ. Your lay vocation begins where you are: in the life God has given you, among the people entrusted to you, and in the responsibilities through which you are called to make Christ present.
“By reason of their special vocation it belongs to the laity to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to God’s will.... It pertains to them in a special way so to illuminate and order all temporal things with which they are closely associated that these may always be effected and grow according to Christ and maybe to the glory of the Creator and Redeemer.”
