Making the Hidden Visible: The Role of the Laity in the New Evangelization - Part I

Jesus said to his disciples,
“Is a lamp brought in to be placed under a bushel basket or under a bed,
 and not to be placed on a lampstand?
For there is nothing hidden except to be made visible;
nothing is secret except to come to light" (Mk. 4:21-22).

From LUMEN GENTIUM  (Light of the Nations)
DOGMATIC CONSTITUTION ON THE CHURCH  

SOLEMNLY PROMULGATED BY HIS HOLINESS POPE PAUL VI ON NOVEMBER 21, 1964

 35. Christ, the great Prophet, who proclaimed the Kingdom of His Father both by the testimony of His life and the power of His words, continually fulfills His prophetic office until the complete manifestation of glory. He does this not only through the hierarchy who teach in His name and with His authority, but also through the laity whom He made His witnesses and to whom He gave understanding of the faith (sensu fidei) and an attractiveness in speech (Cf. Acts 2:17-18; Rev. 19:10) so that the power of the Gospel might shine forth in their daily social and family life.

 They conduct themselves as children of the promise, and thus strong in faith and in hope they make the most of the present, (Cf. Eph. 5:16; Col. 4:5) and with patience await the glory that is to come (Cf. Rom. 8:25). Let them not, then, hide this hope in the depths of their hearts, but even in the program of their secular life let them express it by a continual conversion and by wrestling "against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness (Eph. 6:12).

Just as the sacraments of the New Law, by which the life and the apostolate of the faithful are nourished, prefigure a new heaven and a new earth (Cf. Rev. 21:1), so too the laity go forth as powerful proclaimers of a faith in things to be hoped for (Cf. Heb. 11:1), when they courageously join to their profession of faith a life springing from faith. This evangelization, that is, this announcing of Christ by a living testimony as well as by the spoken word, takes on a specific quality and a special force in that it is carried out in the ordinary surroundings of the world.

An Advent Reflection on the Sabbath Rest

As the Book of Genesis tells us, the Sabbath is what the Creator apportioned to Himself (Gen 2:1-3) after He had called all things into being; after the Lord had created man and then lastly proclaimed to him and to all creatures His provision of food for each of them (Gen 1:29). One might say that the Sabbath is what the Lord “created” after He created; and what He “provided” after providing.

In giving us the Sabbath to observe, the Lord in effect invites us to “taste” or share in what He had first reserved for Himself alone. In this light, the Sabbath rest then becomes something we must do not simply because the Lord commands it, but because it is His greatest gift to us, even greater than the gift of life, as in it we might come to know Him on that day, not as our Creator and Provider, but as He Who Is and Who calls us to Himself.

Observing the Sabbath with the Lord is then an affirmation of our sacred nature, as beings created in the image and likeness of the Creator, as well as of the sacred nature of our work; it is our "Amen" to what the Lord saw when He beheld everything that He had made: that it was all "very good" (Gen 1:31). At the same time, in imitation of the Creator, we must work to ensure that everything we do might also be seen by the Lord as "very good;" that all our days might lead up to, prepare for, and culminate in the great and final Holy Sabbath rest with Him.

Then the King will say to those on His right, "Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world" (Matt 25:34).