Year of the Laity

Introduction:
The CBCP declared 2014 to be the Year of the Laity. It officially began
last Dec 1 with the release of the Pastoral Exhortation titled, Filipino
Catholic Laity: Called to be Saints Sent Forth as Heroes
penned by Archbishop Soc Villegas, the new CBCP President.
As some of you may know, the Philippine Church is preparing for 2021
the 500th year of Christianity in the Philippines (from 1521 to 2021).
The highlight of the preparations is 9 years of intensive evangelization
with a different theme each year from October 21, 2012 until March 16,
2021.
A nine-year journey for the New Evangelization has already been
charted climaxing with the Jubilee Year 2021: Integral Faith Formation
(2013); the Laity (2014); the Poor (2015); the Eucharist and of
the Family (2016); the Parish as a Communion of Communities
(2017); the Clergy and Religious (2018); the Youth (2019);
Ecumenism and Inter-Religious Dialogue (2020); Missio ad
gentes (2021). These are the nine pastoral priorities of the Church in
the Philippines. Last liturgical year, 2013, we celebrated a Year of Faith.
This liturgical year, 2014, is time for a Year of the Laity.
One small sidenote, it would be good to note the correct pronunciation
for the word laity. It should be read a leyyi-tee, not ley-te. In the CBCP
Pastoral Exhortation, Filipino Catholic Laity: Called to be Saints
Sent Forth as Heroes, Bishop Soc, underlines the need to
empower the laity.
Faith and Evangelization
Fr. James Kroeger in his article Celebrating the Year of the Laity
envisions this empowerment as a renewal of the laity, a renewal that
is founded on the pillars of faith and evangelization. We
constantly need to ask: What is the role of faith-filled laity in
evangelization? How do laity live, proclaim, witness, and transmit
Christs Gospel to humanity? How can the laity facilitate the opening

up of peoples lives, society, culture and history to the person of Christ

and his living community, the Church?
Our Philippine history would tell us that, we look forward with gratitude
and joy to March 16, 2021, the fifth centenary of the coming of
Christianity to our beloved land. We remember with thanksgiving the
first Mass celebrated in Limasawa Island on Easter Sunday March 31
that same blessed year. We remember the baptism of Rajah Humabon
who was given his Christian name Carlos and his wife Hara Amihan
who was baptized Juana in 1521. Our eyes gaze on the Santo Nio de
Cebu, the oldest religious icon in the Philippines, gift of Ferdinand
Magellan to the first Filipino Catholics that same year. Indeed the year
2021 will be a year of great jubilee for the Church in the Philippines.
(CBCP Pastoral Letter on the Era of New Evangelization)

Moreover, when we talk about faith and evangelization, we are

reminded that Evangelization indicates proclamation, transmission and
witnessing to the Gospel given to humanity by our Lord Jesus Christ
and the opening up of peoples lives, society, culture and history to the
Person of Jesus Christ and to His living community, the Church.
This New Evangelization is primarily addressed to those who have
drifted from the Faith and from the Church in traditionally Catholic
countries, especially in the West.
What we are being called to do by this task of New Evangelization in
Asia is to consider anew the new methods and means for transmitting
the Good News more effectively to our people. We are challenged
anew to foster in the Church in our country a renewed commitment
and enthusiasm in living out the Gospel in all the diverse areas of our
lives, in real-life practice, challenged anew to become more and
more authentic witnesses of our faith, especially to our Asian
neighbors as a fruit of our intensified intimacy with the Lord.
Being witnesses of this faith

Since we are talking about faith and evangelization, we will not go

further in looking for examples, we should see the situation of our own
local Church here in the Philippines.
Bishop Socrates Villegas recounted that, while the Philippines has been
a Catholic nation for almost 500 years and a vast majority of Filipinos
are Catholic, majority of the corrupt people in government and
business are Catholic, majority of politicians who buy votes are
Catholic, and majority of Filipinos who sell their votes are Catholic.
Hence, there is an urgent need to renew the social and political fabric
of our country. The bishops further add, Individual goodness is not
sufficient anymore. The good individual will only be swallowed up by
the evil system. Bishop Soc notes the insufficiency of our religious
festivities and educational systems, It is certainly a shameful proof of
our failure to evangelize our country that our churches are filled with
people, our religious festivities are fervent, our Catholic schools are
many, but our country is mired in poverty and in corruption. There
appears to be a disconnection between the faith we profess and the
actions we commit.
On the positive side, the CBCP lauded the faith exhibited by Filipinos,
especially when faced with devastating calamities. They said, what
Filipinos have is a paradox of poverty and abundance. We may be
anguished, dazed, and lost in the face of recent calamities but amid all
these, the abundance of hope, faith, and love surfaces. These are the
jewels of Filipino dignity. The first and most important truth about you
Filipino Catholic laity is not poverty but the greatness of your dignity.
The CBCP went on to stress the role of the laity to transform the world
by penetrating the different straits of society where we participate.
Noting the words of the Supreme Pontiff, they said, You must go into
the world of the family, of business, of economics, of politics, of
education, of the mass media and the social media, to every human
endeavor where the future of humanity and the world are at stake and
to make a difference. We can draw strength from reading the Word of
God and the seeking recourse to the Sacraments. More importantly, we
must evangelize through our own simple means by making our faith
bear on our day-to-day decisions and activities.
Concrete ideas

In order to concretize these basic statements of faith and

evangelization, The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines In
their pastoral letter, Live Christ, Share Christ, state their vision for the
Year of the Laity. and outlined important pillars for evangelization.
First, fostering and fulfilling the missio ad gentes, as a special
vocation of the Church in our country, effectively involving our
laypeople, our Christifideles brothers and sisters; our priests and
seminarians; men and women in consecrated life.
Secondly, bringing Good News to the poor. Again and again,
Filipino Catholics coming together to discern priorities, have seen that
the Church here must become genuinely a Church for and with the
poor.
Thirdly, reaching out to those among us whose faith-life has been
largely eroded and even lost due to the surrounding confusion, moral
relativism, doubt, agnosticism; reaching out tothose who have
drifted from the Faith and the Church, and have joined other
religious sects.
Lastly, awakening or reawakening in faith, forming and animating in
Christian life our young people and youth sector groups, in both
urban and rural settings
Indeed, the role and identity of the laity cannot be adequately grasped
without recalling that the pilgrim Church is missionary by her very
nature (AG 2). Without a commitment to missionary evangelization,
the Church (laity, religious, ordained) is simply not true to her identity
as the Church Christ established!
The Church exists out of her faith in Jesus the Word incarnate sent by
the Father, a faith generated by the Holy Spirit. And the Church exists
in order to bring the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ to all
people.
Pope Paul VI insists that evangelizing is the grace and vocation proper
to the Church, her deepest identity (EN 14). He gave a superb
definition of evangelization: evangelizing means bringing the Good

News into all strata of humanity, and through its influence transforming
humanity from within and making it new (EN 18). Indeed, how are lay
people to bring the Gospel into all strata of humanity [social, political,
economic, cultural, spiritual, etc.] and thus transform the world?
Our bishop-shepherds continue: Yet, the gifts of the Holy Spirit
through these sacraments [Baptism and Confirmation] often remain
dormant. This year is to be devoted to the renewal of the laity, to their
empowerment or more accurately to activating their charisms from
the Spirit, so that they may indeed take up their role as co-responsible
agents of evangelization and lead in the task of social transformation.
A challenge left for us
A challenge is stated by our bishops: We need to hear again the great
commandment for mission, the mission mandate of Christ Jesus
himself: As the Father has sent me, even so I send you (John 20:21).
A probing, disturbing question arises: Are we truly convinced of the
mission-identity of the laity?
So as we embark on a nine-year spiritual journey that will culminate
with the great jubilee of 2021 we must bear in mind of this grace-filled
event of blessings for the Church. We should always remember that
indeed that October 21 of last year, when the Holy Father Pope
Benedict XVI add another Filipino to the canon of saints of the Church,
our very own Visayan proto-martyr Pedro Calungsod who gave his life
for the faith on the morning of April 2, 1672 in Guam, it was a great
honor as well as a great challenge to all of us. We should not also
forget our First Filipino saint in the person of Saint Lorenzo Ruiz, who
died for the faith. His famous sord were: "Ego Catholicus sum et animo
prompto paratoque pro Deo mortem obibo. Si mille vitas haberem,
cunctas ei offerrem." {I am a Catholic and wholeheartedly do accept
death for the Lord; If I had a thousand lives, all these I shall offer to
Him
In the time before us, we will focus on these dimensions of faith,
evangelization and discipleship, one by one. And it is most propitious
that as we received the faith 500 years ago, so with the Year 2021we
envision to become a truly sending Church.

In the face of a secularism which in some parts of our present world

has itself become a kind of a dominant religion, in the face of the
reality of billions who live in our time and who have not truly
encountered Jesus Christ nor heard of His Gospel, how challenged we
are, how challenged we must be, to enter into the endeavor of the
New Evangelization! We for whom Jesus has been and is truly the
Way, the Truth and the Life, how can we not want and long and
share Him with brothers and sisters around us who are yet to know and
love Him, who are yet to receive the fullness of Life for which we have
all been created, and without which their hearts will be ever restless
until they find Jesus and His heart which awaits them?
May our Lady, Mary Mother of Our Lord, lead us all in our longing and
labors to bring her son Jesus Christ into our time and our world, our
Emmanuel our God who remains with us now and yet whose coming
again in glory we await.
Maranatha, AMEN.
Sources:
1. Bishop Soc Villegas, Year of the laity intro Document Transcript
at http://www.slideshare.net/karlolara/year-of-the-laity-intro
2. Celebrating the Year of the LaityFiled under: Living Mission Fr. James Kroeger |
3. CBCP Pastoral Letter on the Era of New Evangelization
Deo gratias
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