Sherry
Weddell, Associate Director
When
I think back,
I am quite struck by how much support I have received in my life as a
Christian. I was not a Catholic, but was reared in a Christian family that took
their faith very seriously. Every
member of our family was strongly encouraged to make a personal commitment to
follow Christ. As a college student, I received training in Scripture study,
how to share my faith with others, how to lead a small group, how to pray, and
how to discern God’s call. We took St. Paul’s teaching about spiritual gifts
quite seriously and sought to discern the gifts each of us had been given by
the Holy Spirit.
While
still a student, I found much-needed shelter under the wing of a remarkable
older woman who was a leader in my local church. This nurturing relationship
changed the direction of my life. She taught me how to listen to my own heart,
how to discern the leading of the Holy Spirit, and how to pray for others. I
was deeply impressed by how she had integrated her life with her faith, how she
used her gifts, and how she exercised leadership as a lay woman.
I
had an interest in missionary work to the Middle East and was able to link up
with other young Christians in my neighborhood who were preparing to be
missionaries. As the ways in which God touched other people through me became
clearer, I was encouraged to recognize that I was a kind of
“people-gardener”. I wasn’t exactly a
counselor, but, mysterious though it was, other Christians seemed to grow as
human beings and as apostles around me.
In
retrospect, I am astonished that I never marveled at the abundance of personal
formation and support that was readily available to me as an ordinary Christian
lay woman. Formation is the spiritual, intellectual, and personal preparation
that the Church offers to those men and women who have been called by God to a
specific mission. Since Christ had called every one of his brothers and
sisters to mission, I thought it was only natural that every Christian receive
years of preparation for that mission in their local parish.
Most
importantly, I never found myself alone in my spiritual questionings or
discernment process. I was surrounded by lay peers who were asking the same
questions and wrestling with the same issues—and perfectly at ease in
talking about it. I was regarded as gifted (but then, so was everyone else in
different ways), but never exceptional.
I
was reminded of my blessings when I visited New Zealand last April. I sat with
a priest and an exceptionally articulate lay woman in a small room at the back
of a convention center. The priest had heard me talk to the convention about
the Church’s teaching regarding lay vocation and mission and wanted me to meet
a kindred spirit.
Mary
(not her real name) poured out her burning desire to see lay Catholics prepared
to be apostles in the world. She had done serious study of the documents of
Vatican II and all the magisterial teaching about the laity since the Council.
It was amazing to realize that, on the opposite side of the world, a priest and
a lay woman were beginning a work very similar to our own. They had just
started a formation program for lay Catholics and had eight men and women
involved. But they felt very, very much alone. The priest expressed his
discouragement and sense of isolation. Mary responded firmly, “We can’t be the
only ones in the country who see the need.” “Name one,” challenged her priest
friend. Mary thought hard for several minutes. “I can’t,” she admitted, “but I
still refuse to believe it. We can’t be totally alone.”
Lay
Catholics often believe that they are alone in their hunger for more.
Father Michael sometimes tells the story of a young woman who came to him for
confession. She admitted to him that she came to the sacraments to find the
strength to go out and face the world alone again. Most poignant of all,
she assumed that this was the way that lay Catholics were supposed to
live—completely alone and unsupported in their efforts to live their faith in
the world.
Over
and over again, we’ve seen how formation answers a compelling need adult
Catholics feel. People often tell me after a workshop that they always thought
that there had to be more to being Catholic than just attending Mass.
They know that they need more than the basic catechesis of their childhood.
They are longing for a Christianity that is adult-sized, that will give them
the support they need to live successfully in a demanding and complex world
that is often indifferent or hostile to their faith.
Lay
men and women are electrified to realize that they are apostles, that through
baptism and confirmation Christ has called and gifted them for a unique work of
love that will change the world around them. What they don’t understand is why no
one ever told them that this is what being an adult Catholic is about. One
woman in Idaho said it best: “I went to twelve years of Catholic school and a
Catholic college. I’m 52 years old. How come I had to wait 52 years to hear
about this?”
The
Church has made it clear: “Formation is not the privilege of a few, but a right
and duty of all.” (The Vocation and Mission of the Lay Faithful, 63.)
But the reality is that Catholics who routinely receive formation and on-going
apostolic support—priests, seminarians, and religious—make up only 0.14% of the
whole Catholic community.
Lay
movements, third orders, and specialized institutes are doing a wonderful job
nurturing and empowering lay people—but they are reaching only a tiny portion
of the nearly one billion lay Catholics in the world. Only a highly motivated
minority, with considerable leisure and mobility (not to mention financial
resources), are able to take advantage of formation opportunities outside their
local parish.
At
present, only 2-3% of lay Catholics have real access to significant formation
outside their local parish. But this is not enough! All have been called
by God to be apostles; all have been given gifts by the Holy Spirit for
the sake of the world. To ensure that even 10% of lay Catholics have access to
formation, we will have to turn to the one Catholic institution which is to be
found all over the world and yet is seldom considered as a venue for formation:
the local parish. The local parish is the most natural, most accessible
place for the overwhelming majority of lay Catholics to receive formation: “…the
Parish which has the essential task of a more personal and immediate formation
of the lay faithful” (The Vocation and Mission of the Lay Faithful, 61).
Our
parishes can become real houses of formation that offer ordinary lay Catholics
what priests and religious have long received: help in discernment, sustained
preparation for their mission, and on-going support as they answer God’s call.
In a local parish that recognizes every member as an apostle and is committed
to helping them prepare for and live their mission, lay Catholics will no
longer find themselves isolated and without help or resources in their hunger
for more. They will experience the blessing I knew as a college student, of
being part of a community of kindred spirits, wrestling together with
what it means to follow Jesus Christ into the third Christian millennium.