You, Too, Go Into the Vineyard

By Scott Ferrier, MJ • Phoenix, AZ

As a convert to Catholicism at age forty, I was one of thousands of people who were inspired to become Catholic or who found their Catholic faith revitalized by the personal charisma, vision, and thought of St. Pope John Paul II. Recently I have found myself re-reading many of his works and talks. In San Francisco in September 1987 the Pope gave a talk which summarized the necessary role of the lay vocation in today’s modern, post-Christian world. Just one year later we would hear the same themes of this talk echoed even more strongly in his magnificent Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles Laici (The Lay Members of Christ’s Faithful):

“It is within the everyday world that you the laity must bear witness to God’s kingdom; through you the church’s mission is fulfilled by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Second Vatican Council taught that the specific task of the laity is precisely this: To ‘seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and
by ordering them according to the plan of God.’

“You are called to live in the world, to engage in secular professions and occupations, to live in those ordinary circumstances of family life and life in society from which is woven the very web of your existence. You are called by God…to work for the sanctification of the world from within, in the manner of leaven…

“We face a growing secularism that tries to exclude God and religious truth from human affairs. We face an insidious relativism that undermines the absolute truth of Christ and the truths of faith, and tempts believers to think of them as merely one set of beliefs or opinions among others. We face a materialistic consumerism that offers superficially attractive but empty promises conferring material comfort at the price of inner emptiness. We face an alluring hedonism that offers a whole series of pleasures that will never satisfy the human heart…

“The greatest challenge to the conscience of society comes from your fidelity to your own Christian vocation. It is up to you the Catholic laity to incarnate without ceasing the gospel in society—in American society.”