Vincent Kundukulam
The word secular is often contrasted with the term sacred presuming that the things related to the divine order don’t come within the spectrum of secular sphere. But with the advent of Second Vatican Council Church does not perceive God and world in the opposite poles. The quest for the Transcendent is not something grafted on to the secular world; it is immanent in the human beings as they are created by God. Since the created world has imprint of God in it, the secularity of the world is in the divine plan. The fact that God sent his son into the world shows that secular is not in contrast with the sacred.
What hinders many from giving due role to laymen in the Church is the false belief that the secular is inferior to the spiritual and that the sacred world is reserved for the clergy alone. Certain imageries like ‘Church is the sheep’ create confusion among laity. They feel that they are the poor sheep living at the mercy of clergy.
Given secularity is part of God’s history of salvation, the role of laity, who are called to work in the world, is not to be seen as inferior to the ministry of clergy. Lumen Gentium states the following: ‘Given the faithful are engaged in the ordinary circumstance of life through their work and family, they can contribute to the sanctification of the world by fulfilling their duties in an exemplary manner. By reason of their special vocation, they are destined to engage in temporal affairs and directing them according to God’s will (LG 31). St. Peter considered those who have received faith as precious as the apostle’s themselves’ (2 Pt 1, 1). It means that the difference between clergy and laity is only in the ministry. While clerics are called for the Christian community, the laity have the vocation for human community.
The clergy cannot take up the role of laity, reminds Lumen Gentium 30: ‘The pastors should know that they themselves were not established by Christ to undertake alone the whole salvific mission of the Church; they must recognize faithful’s and charisms and cooperate in the common task’. Laity have equal dignity with clerics because all receive the same baptism. In brief, the role of laity is not relative to that of the priest. Laity has a special vocation to make Church present and fruitful in those places and circumstances where it is only through them that she can become the Salt of the Earth’ (LG 33).
The fact that laity has a unique mission, which cannot be replaced by clergy brings in the necessity of integrating the mission of laity into the mystical body of Christ. The mission of Church in the secular world must get vivid expressions in the life and structure of Church. Laity, who are called to be the ambassadors of humanization of the world, must find a space in the structural bodies of Church, and synodality provides the best means to integrate them into the salvific project of Church. She can visibly proclaim the unconditionality of secular world only if the laity has a non-negligible role in the decision-making bodies.
Worshipping ministry of Church headed by the clergy will be empty if Church does not take seriously the ministry of maintaining human unconditionality in the secular space. Worship is justified only when service of the world is taken seriously. The worshipping ministry of Church is instrumental to the ministry in the world and not the other way around. Put it briefly, synodal model of Church-life, where laity is given a role proper to their baptismal dignity, is essential for Church to integrate the role secularity occupies in the salvific project of God.
kundu1962@gmail.com
