At the
beginning of the New Year, Pope Leo began a new initiative. He announced that
each Wednesday he would be offering catechesis on the documents of the Second
Vatican Council at his weekly general audience.
So he began,
first thing, first week of January 2026, and he explained his reasoning this
series of teachings, now 60 years after Vatican Council II. He said, “as the
years have passed, the Conciliar Documents have lost none of their timeliness;
indeed, their teachings are proving particularly relevant to the new situation
of the Church and the current globalized society.”
In other
words, “the Church has something to say, a message to give, a communication to
make” in our modern world and the Documents of Vatican II are important for
interpretating what God is calling us to do, in this era of AI and global
challenges.
The
following week, the Holy Father began with a catechesis on the first of the
Vatican II documents, Dei Verbum, the dogmatic constitution on Divine
Revelation—how God’s revelation—how God’s revealed truth is imparted to
humanity, particularly through Scripture and Tradition.
He then went
on to discuss Lumen Gentium, the constitution on the Church, and he’s now onto
discuss a third document, Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on Sacred
Liturgy—reflecting on the role of liturgy in the church, the reform of the
liturgy that took place at Vatican II, and the way God uses the rituals, signs
and symbols of the liturgy to impart his divine gifts to us. Exciting stuff.
But again,
for a few months there, the Holy Father was teaching on Lumen Gentium—a very
important document on the make-up of the Church,—so, the role of bishops, the
role of priests and deacons, the role of the consecrated religious, and the
role of the laity, including the role of the family—how all of us, together are
called to fulfill the mission of the Church.
Why do I
bring any of this up? Partially because Lumen Gentium, explaining the role of
the people of God in God’s saving plan, heavily draws upon concepts we find in
today’s scripture passages for the 11th Sunday in ordinary time. And
Pope Leo, in his current catechesis, really draws out some of these themes
quoting even from our first reading today.
In our first
reading, from the book of Exodus, the people of God at the time, comprised of the
Israelites, are at the base of Mt. Sinai where God reminds them how he has delivered
them from 400 years of Egyptian slavery for
a purpose—he chose them for a purpose. God chosen them to be a kingdom of
priests, a holy nation—in order to glorify God in the world. He chose them for
a mission—a priestly mission—to sanctify the world.
Now, in this
era of the Church—of course, God’s chosen people includes us—the baptized
people of the nations of the world—from every place the Gospel has been
preached. And we’re reminded today that we are a kingdom of priests, a royal
priesthood. Pope Leo, just a few weeks ago, spoke on this very idea. He said,
“the Lord Jesus, through the new and eternal covenant, has established a
kingdom of priests, constituting his disciples as a ‘royal priesthood’.”
The Holy
Father says, we are formed into a priestly people at Baptism, which enables us
to worship God in spirit and truth, and to “confess before men the faith which we
have received from God through the Church” quoting Lumen Gentium 11. In other
words, each of us is called to the priestly duty of worshipping rightly and
teaching rightly, witnessing rightly.
Furthermore,
through the sacrament of Confirmation, all the baptized “are more perfectly
bound to the Church … and the Holy Spirit endows them with special strength so
that they are more strictly obliged to spread and defend the faith, both by
word and by deed, as true witnesses of Christ”.
Why has God
formed us into a royal priesthood? Because we have the mission—both ordained
and lay—of sanctifying the world through the spreading and defending the faith.
The Holy
Father goes on, “the exercise of the royal priesthood takes place in many ways,
all aimed at our sanctification, first and foremost through participation in
the offering of the Eucharist.” Every week we come to mass, not just to get an
obligation out of the way—but to participate in right worship—offering ourselves
along with the priest—as a living sacrifice to God the Father.
The Holy
Father goes on, he says, we exercise our royal priesthood through prayer,
asceticism and active charity—prayer fasting and almsgiving aren’t just for
Lent, but are to be part of the ordinary priestly dimension of our faith, and
by doing so, we bear witness to a life renewed by God’s grace. As the Council
summarizes, “it is through the sacraments and the exercise of the virtues that
the sacred nature and organic structure of the priestly community is brought
into operation”.
We could do
an hour lecture on this stuff, it’s so good. But for now, we do well to
consider: why is Pope Leo wanting to remind us, now in 2026, that we are a
priestly people. Because this is one of the great needs of our time. For you
and for me, to more deeply fulfill the priestly duties of our baptism: to offer
our life to God, to prayerfully intercede for the world, to sanctify the
ordinary duties of daily life, and to bear witness to Christ as best as we
possibly can, especially through works of charity.
Again, this
priestly duty is not just for the ordained. Each of us have a priestly role—to
pray, to preach and teach, to sanctify the world and to save souls.
The
Catechism speaks particularly of parents priestly role. It says, “In a very
special way, parents share in the [priestly] office of sanctifying “by leading
a conjugal life in the Christian spirit and by seeing to the Christian
education of their children.”
What does a
priest do? He sanctifies. And so priestly parents have a special duty of
ordering and orienting your children to God—through your holy example and holy
teaching.
In the
Church, God works powerfully through Holy Families. When someone asks you what
it means to be Catholic, you should be able to say, come and spend time with my
family. It’s a little chaotic yes, but, the Catholic family is the place where
the Church in a vital way, lives out its call to daily love, care, hospitality,
sacrifice, forgiveness, prayer, Christian education, and turning to God’s
healing and grace in our brokenness. Look at how we pray together and for each
other, look at how we forgive one another, look at how we are patient with each
other’s smaller imperfections, look at how we study the faith together, and
work together to meet the needs of the less fortunate and the suffering.
So, Pope Leo
is offering some pretty powerful catechesis right now, which helps us to
understand what God’s plan for the Church, for each of us, and how we are
called to live out our call to holiness and the mission of the Church. The Holy
Father’s messages, audiences, homilies, and encyclicals are available for free
on the Vatican’s website. I highly recommend you check them out.
May God’s Divine
Assistance help us be that royal priesthood and holy nation that God made us to
be, enlightened by God’s Truth, washed in Christ’s Blood, united and animated
by God’s Spirit for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.
No comments:
Post a Comment