Rick Mc Cord
Executive Director, U.S. Catholic Bishops, Secretariat for Family, Laity, Women and Youth

FOR ALL THE SAINTS

Introduction The Call to Holiness The church who is a disciple The church who is a mother The church who is a missionary Conclusion

In a week during which we have celebrated the feasts of All Saints and All Souls and, now this morning, in a city which has a strong connection with saints—whether on the football field or in the jazz at Preservation Hall—I want to focus on sainthood. My reason is simple: not only is saintliness or holiness the goal of a Christian life, but it’s also the most basic, most direct way to answer the question: what is the call or vocation of the lay person? And that question, as I’m given to understand, is what inspires the theme of your conference this morning.

But just to say that lay people are called to holiness, called to be saints, and to leave it there is not sufficient. Why? The call to holiness is given to all the Christian faithful, lay and ordained and those living in consecrated life. It’s our common heritage and responsibility by reason of our baptism. So if we are to say something distinctive about the call of a lay person, we must translate holiness into more specific and relevant terms. This is what I will attempt to do in my presentation and also what I hope you will do in our discussion period afterwards.

We venerate Mary as first among the saints, as a unique model of holiness for lay people and as a prototype for how we should respond to God’s call. With this in mind, I will propose that three aspects of Mary’s life can shed light on what it means specifically for a layperson to be called to holiness. The three aspects or roles I’ve selected are Mary as disciple, as mother and as missionary.

Being members of the Marist family, you dedicate yourselves to “continuing the work of Mary.” So we will ask how Mary’s work as disciple, mother and missionary might continue in the lives of Christian lay women and men, particularly in the church and society we find now in the United States. To what challenges would a disciple, a mother and a missionary—especially those dedicated to Mary—be called upon to respond? It is precisely in so responding that we laity will make the universal call to holiness particular in our own lives. And together we will make the holiness of the entire church more visible in the world.

But before moving into what the three Marian roles of disciple, mother and missionary might suggest about being a lay person—a lay saint—I want to pause for a short while over the question of holiness itself. If holiness, or a life of intimate union with God, is the purpose for which we continue this three-fold work of Mary, then we must be convinced in the first place that holiness is possible and that it is attainable by lay people. We must get over the feeling that sanctity is always for others.

Last August in Rome two million young people heard a striking message from Pope John Paul II, both in his speeches and displayed on banners all around the city. He said: “Do not be afraid to become the saints of the new millennium!” This is an important message for us not-so-young people also. It should prompt us to ask: are we afraid or ashamed to talk about becoming holy? Can we actually imagine ourselves striving to be saints without being embarrassed by the very notion?

It can be difficult, especially if we’ve grown up with an image of saints as otherworldly. We might be tempted to downplay our expectations or disguise our convictions. We might feel a little like the doctor who volunteered regularly to speak to high school classes about the physiology of sex and reproduction but was embarrassed to tell his wife what he was really doing. So instead he told her he was giving lectures about sailing. This was OK until the day his wife met one of his students in the grocery store. The girls said, “Oh, Mrs. Smith, we just think your husband, Dr. Smith, is the greatest; he’s such an expert; he answers all our questions.” To which Mrs. Smith said, “Well, that’s certainly news to me. I don’t know why he thinks he’s such an expert. He’s only done it a few times, and each time he either got seasick or lost his hat!”

As laity, we must not be embarrassed to speak about holiness as our goal and to think of ourselves as saints in the making. Belonging to a faith-sharing group, or doing Bible study or spiritual reading, or working with a spiritual director, or occasionally making a retreat: all these are opportunities for us to become more comfortable with our call to holiness, finding the words to talk about it, and giving and receiving the support needed if we are to keep working at it.

In the four decades since the close of the Second Vatican Council, we laity have responded positively and eagerly to the many new means of spiritual growth available to us; and we have also returned with renewed vigor to older and more traditional methods, such as devotions, the rosary, and eucharistic adoration. As long as none of these displaces Christ from the center of our faith and becomes an end in itself; I think we can be grateful for all the ways in which we have found words, actions and symbols to get comfortable with and to express our call to holiness.

This is very important because, as we lay people grow in holiness, the collective spiritual heritage and witness of the church is enlarged and diversified. The world can then look at the church and see wider possibilities, more models of what it means to follow Christ. Sanctity is no longer defined only by those who are virgins, or martyrs, or popes or founders of religious orders.

One of the achievements of the Second Vatican Council, which came to an end 35 years ago next month, was its teaching about the universal call to holiness. This did a great deal to dispel the mistaken notion that lay people were unable to really “go for the gold” when it comes to sanctity. Here is what the Council says:

It is therefore quite clear that all Christians, in whatever state or walk of life, are called to the fullness of Christian life and the perfection of charity. And this holiness is conducive to a more human way of living, even in society here on earth. In order to reach this perfection, the faithful should use the strength dealt out to them by Christ’s gift. So that, following in his footsteps and conformed to his image, doing the will of God in everything, they may wholeheartedly devote themselves to the glory of God and to the service of neighbor. Thus the holiness of the people of God will grow in fruitful abundance, as is clearly shown in the history of the church by the lives of so many saints (Constitution on the Church, 40).

Twenty years ago, the U.S. bishops wrote a pastoral message to the lay faithful in which they described—in quite poetic terms—just how the universal call to holiness takes root in the lives of lay people. They say:

…lay men and women hear the call to holiness in the very web of their existence, in and through the events of the world, the pluralism of modern living, the complex decisions and conflicting values they must struggle with, the richness and fragility of sexual relationships, the delicate balance between activity and stillness, presence and privacy, love and loss (Called and Gifted, 1980).

So, in the church after the Second Vatican Council, in many different ways we have experienced a massive shift in the direction of making holiness understandable and attainable by everyone. Our first responsibility is to actually believe that this call is given to us. Once we are convinced of the possibility, we will start to see our lives in a new way. And we can begin to look for the specific ways in which the call to holiness is being transmitted to us who should not be afraid to become the saints of the new millennium.

For how this might happen I now turn to Mary in her roles of disciple, mother and missionary. We honour her with the title, Mother of the Church. If we are to continue her work, then we too must bring forth or give birth to the church in our lives and for the world. And so we ask: following the spirit of Mary and responding as disciple, as mother, as missionary, what kind of a church could laity bring into being today? Let me propose only a few characteristics of a church that is disciple, mother and missionary and raise some questions about the laity’s role in giving birth to this church.

Mary is pre-eminently a disciple. She receives a call from God; she responds promptly, completely and in faith. In the company of others, she learns from and follows Christ. I think it’s true to say that the work of Mary as disciple is all about being aware of a vocation and following it.

The very notion that one can be called by God, first into life itself and then into some special task, is deeply woven into our faith tradition. The Bible is filled with stories of people being called and of them responding—sometimes, reluctantly—to what they understand God is proposing for their lives. In short, a “vocational consciousness” seems altogether natural for those who walk with the Lord.

Unfortunately, I think this is not as true today as it should be. We’ve lost a broad and rich vocational consciousness in the church today. And, instead, two other tendencies have arisen. On the one hand, we have identified a vocation too exclusively with a calling to the priesthood or religious life and, on the other hand, when we have recognized other vocations, we have spoken about them in somewhat static terms, i.e., as “states’ in life that seem to limit choices, rather than open up possibilities for people.

What I think we need is a rediscovered, renewed emphasis—maybe even a campaign—to preach, teach, and generally to create a vocational consciousness in all Christ’s faithful. Everyone needs to hear loud and clear the call to discipleship as Mary did. What’s more, we must learn to encourage one another, especially young people, to listen and respond. We should be generous in this and understand that a broadly shared vocational consciousness in the church will increase and enrich all particular vocations (priesthood, religious life, marriage, etc.).

We need to use the term “vocation” not only more extensively and inclusively, but also more imaginatively and dynamically. When, for example, was the last time you heard Christian marriage preached as a vocation equal in dignity with the priesthood, or when have you heard anything about the vocation to a certain kind of work, career or profession?

We believe in a God who is always calling people—saying “I have important and special work for you to do.” It’s significant that the opening paragraphs of the Catechism of the Catholic Church use the word “call” five times to speak about the meaning of our Life in Christ. We need to reflect on this, to celebrate it, to proclaim it more openly and vigorously. To be called as a disciple and to respond is a fundamental dynamic of our faith. It can make a major difference when we begin to see our whole life in vocational terms, in the discipleship image, and not just a series of smart or dumb, short-term or long-term decisions we might make on our own. Persons can still make good choices about a relationship or a career, but how much more enriched would that choice be if it arose from the conviction that this was also in the plan of God.

I’m convinced that if more people entered marriage with even a partial understanding of it as a Christian vocation, and not just as a lifestyle choice, we would see a significant change for the better in the quality and stability of marriages. And, as everyone knows so well, this could have a decidedly positive impact on our society, on our families and especially on children.

I particularly like the way authors James and Evelyn Whitehead describe vocation. It’s an invitation to grow into one’s full identity as a Christian, they say. It’s who I am and who God wants me to be, coming together and trying to happen. Vocation is as much our dream for ourselves as it is God’s dream for us.

Not long ago, John Paul II wrote about promoting a new “vocational culture” in young people and families. By culture he means a broad collection of attitudes, values and behaviours that combine to stir up in a person the freedom to recognize and respond to a call from God. The Pope tells us the components of such a culture are gratitude, openness to mystery, a sense of individual completeness, and another that I found particularly intriguing: the ability to dream and think big!

I wonder if we’re shortchanging our young people—and indeed people of all ages—to the extent we don’t use vocational and discipleship language more often and energetically. You’re well aware of how compelling the Protestant evangelical notion of Jesus as personal saviour can be. Their critical question is always: are you saved? But equally compelling and critical should be this question: are you called?

Just as important as using the term “vocation” to speak of every Christian is the need to present vocation in categories that include but are not limited to what have been called “states in life,” namely, marriage, single life, priesthood and religious life. Yes, we must speak of these as legitimate vocations, as ways in which persons pursue a specific path on the universal Christian journey to holiness. But I think we must also find ways to talk about vocations within vocations. We need to allow for growth and development within a certain commitment. We must reckon with the reality of people living much longer lives than ever. How does a vocation to marriage, for example, change over the years? How must it change? True, it’s the same vocation but it’s also different as the stages of life unfold. Might people be called to one vocation at a certain time in their lives and to something else at another?

As you can gather, I think an important way for lay people to continue the work of Mary, the first disciple, is to encourage and develop within the church a new, richer, and broader vocational consciousness. As a community, we need to become more vocation-driven, in the widest and best sense of the term, so that the grace and the call we first received in baptism can flourish at all stages of our lives.

Motherhood is at the very center of Mary’s identity as a person. This role is all encompassing; it is her life. Because there are so many aspects of motherhood, I want to focus on just one and to ask what it might mean for laity who seek to do the work of Mary as mother.

The aspect I’ve chosen is welcome or inclusion. Mothers do this so well. One of their distinct virtues is to make sure everyone is included. Mothers naturally gather us in: they widen the circle, lengthen the table, set one more place, bring in one more chair— whatever it takes to make sure all feel welcomed and cared for.

Mothers give birth, certainly in the literal sense of begetting children but also in the extended sense of generating and sustaining a community in the family, the parish, the neighborhood. Even in the minimal record we have of Mary’s life, we can picture her at the center of her earthly family and as a point of unity and collaboration among Jesus’ disciples, particularly in the days following his death.

The challenge which Mary faced then is still before us today—with some new dimensions and with an increased sense of urgency. To continue the work of Mary, the mother, the one who holds a family together, we will have to learn how to live creatively with the diversity that is present and growing in our church.

Ethnic and racial diversity are a major part of this picture. How the church responds to this reality depends a lot on lay initiative and leadership. The responsibility of “opening wide the doors” to newcomers, to people who are different from us, to those who bring other gifts, is something that must be expressed in everyone’s words, actions, attitudes and choices, and not simply turned over to the ordained leaders of the community to do for us! This past July in Los Angeles the Catholic bishops of the United States hosted a giant, jubilee year celebration with the theme, “the many faces in God’s house.” Five thousand people came to celebrate as a Eucharistic people, to welcome and to be welcomed by their brothers and sisters, and to learn how diversity can enrich our unity rather than promote further divisions among us. There were indeed many faces gathered in Los Angeles: people of color, the old and the young, speaking different languages, adorned in colorful clothing, sharing different rituals, customs and stories. Perhaps some of you were there, too.

With this special gathering, this Encuentro as it was called, I think we reached a point in our national identity as a church where we now acknowledge: first, new facts about cultural diversity; second, new assumptions or expectations about what it means; and third, new strategies about how to respond. Together all of these pose a challenge of conversion in our minds and hearts. They call forth entirely new ways of thinking and acting and loving as the body of Christ.

Let’s look briefly at what is new and what it means. The church in the U.S. has been from the beginning a community built by successive waves of immigrants. In a sense, we had cultural diversity and its many challenges from the very start. So what makes the situation today all that different?

Until nearly the mid-twentieth century, immigration was almost entirely from Europe and therefore consisted mostly of Caucasian peoples. The most notable exception was the forced immigration of Africans as slaves during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This brought people of color to our shores, though by no means under the same circumstances as the European immigrants.

The dominant image used for this period of immigration was the “melting pot,” which conveyed the notion that newcomers would gradually but surely lose their different languages and distinctive customs and be blended together into a new people. And so much effort went into underplaying or even suppressing cultural differences.

In the latter half of the twentieth century, a new era of immigration began. This time it was people of colour who came from Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Their growing presence among us has made us even more aware of the ancestors of African slaves who were already here, not to mention also the Native American tribes who were here to greet Christopher Columbus!

In addition to the fact that we now have a different kind of newcomer by reason of ethnicity and race, we are also experiencing a different paradigm or assumption about the meaning of immigration. The melting pot is out and the salad bowl is now the dominant image. Immigrants generally do not want to be melted down but rather mixed together to form something new without entirely losing their distinctive flavour. The changed facts about immigration and the new expectations that are produced by it bring inevitable tensions and challenges.

And it’s in our parishes, schools and organizations that we experience these firsthand and where we must find new ways of responding. The older strategy with the European immigrants was to establish national parishes and a whole host of separate organizations. These functioned like halfway houses to help people gradually make a transition into the dominant culture. For a variety of reasons, this strategy no longer seems feasible today, at least on a broad scale.

Instead, each and every parish is now challenged to become a home for the “many faces in God’s house,”the many people in Christ’s mystical body. This is enormously difficult work. It involves changes in nearly everything from styles of prayer and singing in the liturgy to how we select people to serve in leadership roles and to what we offer by way of social activities and parish suppers.

Our challenge is to grow into parishes that are truly intercultural, not just multicultural. The multicultural parish or group recognizes its diverse makeup but prefers its various members to coexist and function in parallel worlds. So, for example, there will be a Haitian Mass tacked onto a schedule of English masses or there will be separate Hispanic groups within the one youth ministry program.

The multicultural parish has made progress just to have reached this point but there’s more required, if a parish is to become truly intercultural. You don’t get there overnight. It takes a lot of conversion and a lot of effort, including making mistakes and starting over. How do we know if we’re on the way to becoming intercultural? There are three important signposts on the road. Each represents a goal we should be striving for. Fr. Robert Schreiter has named them well, and so the best I can do is to summarize his thoughts.

The first goal is the simple recognition of the various cultures and groups present in the community. To recognize means to make visible what would otherwise remain invisible. It begins with acknowledging and welcoming, and extending hospitality. The most immediate ways to express it are by incorporating different languages, music and food into certain parish activities.

The second stage or goal moves toward respect for cultural difference. Respect means acknowledging that difference is not going to disappear. It is more than tolerance. It means coming to the point of valuing the difference in its own right and being willing to get personally engaged with people who embody that difference. This is a lot more difficult and takes longer to achieve.

After some experience of success and failure, it is possible to work on the third goal, which is healthy interaction among cultures. This is based on a confidence about the value of one’s own culture and a sense of security that is not threatened by difference. It is especially marked by a willingness to be changed by the encounter with another person and to incorporate aspects of that otherness into how I understand the world and act in it.

When a person or a group makes the breakthrough to being intercultural, then the body of Christ takes on a wider and deeper meaning. When we go from simply living next to one another to living with each other, we pass over into a new spiritual reality, we die and rise again, we grow in holiness.

As the largest religious denomination in this country, we Catholics have a graced opportunity to model for the larger society how diversity can enrich unity and how people of various races, cultures, and backgrounds can live in harmony. It’s an essential part of the message and the witness we offer to the world about what life in Christ really means. So, in the spirit of Mary our mother, we need to accept our responsibility to create this kind of community where all are welcomed and have a place.

I want to turn now to the third aspect of Mary’s work in the church, namely, the missionary dimension. As far as I know, we have no exact evidence that Mary ever left her homeland to travel with any of the apostles on missionary journeys. This doesn’t mean, however, that she didn’t have an influential role in developing the missionary consciousness of the early Christian community. It was, after all, she and the other women who traveled with Jesus, who strengthened the faith of the apostles immediately after the resurrection. And Luke tells us that she was with them in the upper room when they were anointed with the power of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. So we are justified in speaking of Mary as a missionary, first to the apostles themselves and, afterwards, through them to the whole world. She, as much as they, plays a role in helping the little community to break loose of its fear, to leave the safety of the upper room and to bring the good news into the streets and marketplaces.

Mary is mother of the church and, for this reason, also an evangelizer because, as Pope Paul VI said: “To evangelize is the grace and vocation proper to the church, her most profound identity” (EN, #14). John Paul II puts it even more directly: “The entire mission of the church is concentrated and manifested in evangelization” (CL, #33).

When the present Holy Father speaks of evangelization, he frequently calls for a “new” evangelization. This term has several rich layers of meaning—one of which refers to the fact that places in which the seeds of faith were planted long ago are now in need of a “re-evangelization” because people may be living outwardly as Christian but inwardly as if their faith really makes no difference—or, to put it another way, the connection between what they celebrate and profess on Sunday and what they do the other days of the week has been severely damaged or even lost altogether.

This is certainly the situation in our own country. Compared to other nations of the western world, we still have high rates of church attendance and religious affiliation. And yet, we should not let this fact blind us to another reality; namely, that Catholics on average do not differ all that much, in attitudes or behaviors, from the general population. We need to be evangelized as much as anyone else.

The Holy Father is well aware of this when he says: “Without doubt a mending of the Christian fabric of society is urgently needed in all parts of the world. But for this to come about what is needed first is to remake the Christian fabric of the ecclesial community itself present in these countries and nations.... This will be possible if the lay faithful overcome in themselves the separation of the gospel from life, to again take up in their daily activities in family, work and society, an integrated approach to life that is fully brought about by the strength and inspiration of the Gospel” (CL #34).

How can we achieve this integrated approach to life? How can we be the “new” evangelizers within our own faith community and thus continue the work of Mary who was missionary to the apostles? Let me propose two things for consideration.

First, we must be convinced of the value of engagement with the world. We must believe that our faith calls us to help shape and transform the world, not to turn away from it. There is a temptation among some Christian groups today to see the world as the kingdom of Satan and to abandon all hope for it. This is not the Catholic Christian understanding of creation and redemption. We believe we’re here to help bring the world to a state that prepares us to live forever in the reign of God, which Christ will establish in the fullness of time.

Second, to the extent we have this hopeful attitude about the world, we must see ourselves working as leaven or yeast to bring forth love and justice within our various communities.

We can begin with the community of our own family, for how we treat our parents, spouses, siblings, and children reflects the depth of our commitment to Christ’s love and justice. We demonstrate this by how we spend our time and money, and our family life includes specific acts of charity and service and advocacy.

We also belong to an economic community by reason of being workers, employers, investors, and consumers. Our basic call as workers is to do our jobs well, making the most of our talents and opportunities, treating others fairly and with dignity, and working with integrity and creativity. Those of us who are owners, managers, or investors are called, not just to avoid doing harm, but actively to do good, especially by protecting the rights of the poor and vulnerable, and by asking whether our products and services truly build up the community and protect God’s creation. As consumers in an amazingly affluent culture, we are called to make deliberate decisions about living more simply and about sharing the world’s wealth more fairly.

Finally, we are members of a civic and political community. As Catholic citizens we are called to be the leaven in society by getting involved in the democratic process. We cannot be indifferent or cynical about this obligation. Our political choices should not reflect simply our own interests, partisan preferences or special agendas but should be shaped by the principles of our faith and our commitment to justice, especially for the poor and vulnerable. Catholics should be among the first to ask in any given situation: What is the common good? How will it be served? This question is largely absent from public life today. To raise the question of the common good and to make it a measuring rod for political choices in not only responsible citizenship, its faith-filled citizenship. It’s called evangelizing the culture.

And, in a few days, it means getting out to vote. If we are to carry the values of the gospel into the public square, as Paul and the apostles once did, then we must vote as formed and informed Catholic Christians. As the bishops have reminded us in their national statement about faithful citizenship: “In the catholic tradition, responsible citizenship is a virtue; participation in the political process is a moral obligation.”

The real significance of Marian devotion, which is enjoying a renewal in the church today, does not consist in whether or not we believe in certain miracles or apparitions or promises. People who are truly devoted to Mary try to imitate her by making their lives a continual journey toward holiness that finds expression in the concrete circumstances of their lives. She has traveled this path before us and, as disciple, as mother, as missionary she has much to teach us if we are willing to learn and respond to challenges that are before us.

As I draw this talk to a long-overdue conclusion, I’d like to leave you with an image—a work of art in sculpture that was added recently to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC. This enormous 38 ton, 750 square foot sculpture relief is entitled “The Universal Call to Holiness.” It covers the back wall of the church just above the main doors so that, when you’re in the church, and are turning around to leave it, you look up and see this inspiring work in marble spread out before you. It depicts many people from all walks of life being drawn upwards and toward the center in which the Holy Spirit is represented as a dove. There is great energy and eagerness in their response. But just as central and prominent in the piece is Mary who is reaching out and helping and drawing everyone forward. And also not to be overlooked, is this feature: no one is walking or moving toward the center alone. People are holding hands, leaning on one another in groups, assisting and supporting each other in various ways. Clearly, no one is answering the call to holiness without the intercession of Mary and without the support of a Christian community.

You, as Marist laity, have a special grace and opportunity to express both these truths: everyone can look to Mary for help on the road to sainthood, and nobody will ever get to the destination all alone. Together we’re in that great number of the saints— marchin’on, marchin’in!

Rick McCord

**StarWheel Mandala by Aya at www.starwheels.com