Who are the laity?

The following speech was delivered at the welcome reception for The Hour of the Laity 2025 (THL2025) in Mexico City, Mexico.

By Luis Fernando Calvo

Let’s get to business.

The first idea that I would like to put forward is that the word laity comes from the Greek laós, which means people. And this is relevant for our interests: we are the people of God. But please avoid any confusion. Our brothers in the priesthood and our religious brothers and sisters are people of God, as well.

Then, if we are laós, it means that we are numerous, we are a multitude of sons and daughters of the Church. When the book of Revelation speaks of a multitude with white robes, it also comprises lay faithful.

This is clearly exemplified in the book of Revelation, chapter 7:

"After this I had a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue. They stood before the throne and before the Lamb, wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands."

This is us too.

Now, all members of God's people share:

A common baptism
A common faith
A common dignity
And a common call to perfection, meaning a saintly life

Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church from the Second Vatican Council states that:

"The term laity is here understood to mean all the faithful except those in holy orders and those in the state of religious life specially approved by the Church. These faithful are by baptism made one body with Christ and are constituted among the People of God; they are in their own way made sharers in the priestly, prophetical, and kingly functions of Christ; and they carry out for their own part the mission of the whole Christian people in the Church and in the world."

The key difference between the religious and our brothers in the priesthood lies in how and where we pursue our vocation, our perfection as sons and daughters of the Church.

Our perfection is found not within the boundaries of our beloved parish or church group but within the temporal realities, our day-to-day existence. We are called to Christify the world, not from the outside but within it, as leaven operates in bread. Thus, we are necessary.

We, among the laós of God, the people of God, are the ones called to bring temporal realities to Christ, conforming them to the will of God. The world has a vocation as well; it is not meant to be destroyed but transformed, and this transformation will occur by our irreplaceable contribution. God has decided, and this may come across as difficult to admit, to make himself incapable of saving humanity directly, but he wants to save humanity and the world through us. We are not Pelagians but, keep in mind, that our calling is to be hands, eyes, legs and heart of Christ in the world.

Saint Paul's letter to the Romans admonishes us in this capacity:

"For creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God; for creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God."

We Catholics, in stark difference with certain Protestant branches or with the ancient Gnostics, believe that the world is inherently good, because it comes from the hands of infinite Goodness. The world thus suffers from the consequence of original sin, as our human nature does too, but its vocation, its telos, its purpose, is also God.

Our call as laymen is to dominate the world and this needs to be rightly understood. We should use the world for our benefit, for the meeting of our proper needs—not every need we create along the way or that marketing would sell to us, but our right and ordered needs must be met by responsible and fatherly use of the world, of creation. God has created the world, but we do not find a loaf of bread in the wilderness or find brick and mortar in the rivers; we do find in creation the inputs that through work must be transformed to benefit us directly. This also means that when we look at the world, the proper view comes from a communal perspective rather than an individualistic one.

Our work is a means for our sanctification and the sanctification of the world as well.

Now, we can see that the world right now is a messy place to be. Did we start the fire? Well, let me use this analogy: if the world is on fire, and this is not to be understood as something beneficial, then we must be firemen who run towards the conflagration and control the fire. It is our duty, our call, our vocation to heal the world, but not through our means, but because we must be true Cristóforos, that is, those who take Christ to the world.

The world does not need me, but it is Christ it needs. Let me share again this truth: Christ decided, out of love, to be carried by mankind to mankind. That is why a saintly life is needed to bring about a Pentecost and not a Babel.

In the past, it was commonplace to think that a saintly life could be achieved mainly by a rejection of the world, a fuga mundi.

The Second Vatican Council will reaffirm the universal call to holiness:

"The laity, by their very vocation, seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God. They live in the world, that is, in each and in all of the secular professions and occupations. They live in the ordinary circumstances of family and social life, from which the very web of their existence is woven."

Now, I don't believe that the Church would ever preach that sainthood can't be attained in lay life. Our Beloved Mother is a laywoman, as Saint Joseph, Protector of the Church, is. But also, Saint Louis of France, Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, Saint Thomas More, Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati, Blessed Karl of Austria and Zita, and many others.

In times of rampant secularity and outward rejection of a transcendent view of reality, we, the laity, can reach places and Areopagus that can’t be reached by our pastors. In the words of Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of the Second Vatican Council:

"The laity are called in a special way to make the Church present and operative in those places and circumstances where only through them can it become the salt of the earth."

If it is not by our testimony of charity and the goodness that God has reaped in our hearts, then many will have to conform to a life without hope, because Christianity, in its fullness, as preached by the Church, is what the world needs. But we are not Gnostics, we are not saved by knowledge, although knowledge of the truths of the faith is necessary, but we are saved by love, love of Christ and love of neighbor. We are not called to be informants, but we are called to be witnesses, witnesses of hope, using George Weigel’s expression in reference to Saint John Paul II.

A special emphasis on the saintly life in the temporal realities did not start with Saint Josemaría Escrivá, also a beloved saint, but we can trace this teaching to someone such as Saint Francis de Sales:

"Many Christians think it's impossible to live in the world, amidst all kinds of worries and difficulties, and at the same time enjoy a true friendship with the Lord. To dispel this prejudice and introduce ordinary Christians to the path of holiness, I have written this book."

He's speaking, of course, of the Introduction to the Devout Life, a true classic.

In another place in his book, he would say:

"God commanded at creation that all plants should bear fruit, each according to its kind, and in the same way He also commands Christians to produce fruits of holiness, each according to their condition and state, that is, according to their strength, occupations, and obligations. For it is not right for the bishop to want to follow the solitude of the Carthusian monk, nor for married people to live as poorly as religious, nor for the farmer to be in church all day as the monks, nor for the monk to be involved in as many matters as the bishop."

He would add some sentences later:

"It is not only a mistake, but a perversion, to try to prevent workers, soldiers, business owners, or even married people from embarking on the path to holiness. It is true that the purely contemplative or religious life cannot be practiced in these forms of life; but there are also other spiritual practices proper to lay people. Wherever we are, we can aspire to a life of perfection."

Then, we have the saintly teachings of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus. Her Little Way is the way of the humble and the meek, the way in which we embrace silently and gladly the crosses of our earthly existence. For her, holiness is found in everyday life by means of love, which consists of doing ordinary things in an extraordinary way, with total trust in God and full dedication in small daily actions. In her autobiography she would direct these words to Our Lord:

"Yes, my Beloved, this is how my life will be consumed... I have no other way to show you my love than by scattering flowers, that is, by not letting slip any small sacrifice, not a single glance, not a single word, making use of even the smallest things and doing them out of love..."

And then, we must consider that the life of Saint Josemaría Escrivá needs to be understood in terms of the universal call to holiness and the fact that we can become holy without rejecting the world. These teachings, that the Lord revealed to Saint Josemaría as early as 1928, almost 40 years before the Second Vatican Council, were fully embraced by the Great Council.

Because of his teachings, Saint John Paul II described Saint Josemaría, on his canonization day, as the saint of the ordinary.

About the inestimable relevance of work properly understood, he taught:

"Man should not limit himself to making things, to building objects. Work is born of love, manifests love and is ordered to love. We recognize God not only in the spectacle of nature, but also in the experience of our own work, our own effort."

For Saint Josemaría, the purpose and mission in life, for those of us who dwell in worldly venues, should be this:

"Work always and in everything with sacrifice, to put Christ at the summit of all human activities."

And we should ask ourselves, what obstacles can we find in our way? This should be a matter of prayer and reflection. We should ask daily our guardian angel about this. We should examine our conscience daily on this particular matter. What are the obstacles that I need to overcome to please God in my pursuit of holiness? Let me share the prospect laid forward by Christifideles Laici, apostolic exhortation by Saint John Paul II, published in 1988:

"In particular, two temptations can be cited which they have not always known how to avoid: the temptation of being so strongly interested in Church services and tasks that some fail to become actively engaged in their responsibilities in the professional, social, cultural and political world; and the temptation of legitimizing the unwarranted separation of faith from life, that is, a separation of the Gospel's acceptance from the actual living of the Gospel in various situations in the world."

Thus, in a nutshell, temptation for us means clericalism on one hand, and separation of life and faith, on the other hand. The first one leads us to believe that our vocation is fulfilled by priestly assimilation; the other one makes us believe that our faith does not contribute at all to our earthly ventures and to the common good of mankind, and these two errors must be avoided. Our salvation and the salvation of those around us depend on it.

Let me clarify this matter further: we should not understand clericalism as a rejection of love, deep respect and devotion to our brothers in the priesthood. Through their hands we receive the sacraments that bring us true and everlasting life. We should avoid gossiping, murmuring and other vices when we think and speak of our Pastors. This also does not mean that we cannot confront them personally with respect and charity when we think they have made a mistake. Clericalism is sometimes wrongly used to promote the democratization of the church, which must be avoided. Christ himself laid the foundations for the Church, his body, and he clearly taught that the Church is hierarchical and the nature of the Church is not for us to modify. The church is rightly called a perfect society, meaning that it was directly instituted by God. We, however, cannot say this about society or the economy or the political realm, where we can use different means and structures to live in it.

The other error that must be avoided is a true tragedy of our times: being Catholic on Sundays only. This is schizophrenia. We cannot separate ourselves or have multiple personalities and if we do, it must be considered a grave disorder. We should live in accordance to our deeply upheld values, either in the polls or at Mass, in a family gathering or at my workplace, in sports or in cinemas. We are called to have unity of life: being Christian is an all-encompassing criterion. But this disunity of life has allowed catholic men and women to crucify Christ repeatedly in the public sphere. It is with the approval of people ill-informed, including Catholics, Lord have mercy, that abortion, IVF and the destruction of marriage have come to fruition. It is the shame of our time, because we Catholics have assumed the individualistic mentality that crumbles societies before our eyes.

This is not a reason to despair but a call to love, to renew our fidelity to the Living God and to our Holy Mother Church that is in much need of our testimony and our actions, to beginning and beginning again, with a sporting spirit as Saint Josemaría used to say.

So, dear friends and fellow travelers: Happiness on earth is possible but its last name is sainthood. And this is our call.

Let me finish with a quote by French author Léon Bloy:

"There is only one sadness in life: not being a saint."

Luis Fernando Calvo is the executive director of Instituto Tomás Moro in San José, Costa Rica, dedicated to political thought and the promotion of Catholic Social Teaching.

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