29th Sunday of Ordinary Time, B October 20, 2024
Fr. Alexander Albert St. Mary Magdalen, Abbeville
“Whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.” Jesus does not mind ambition, does not reject our desire for greatness – he gives us that desire! – he only minds that we so consistently misunderstand what true greatness is. Not everyone will be a super saint, known world-wide and celebrated for the next 1000 years. But, everyone who gets to heaven will be a saint. If you don’t want greatness of any kind, if you don’t want to be a saint, then we have a problem.
So here’s the good news. You can be a saint. You can go to heaven, which is the same thing. Start by believing that. Then, get to work. What work? Be a servant of God and of others. The much harder question is this: what kind of service do you do? Put another way, what is your apostolate?
“Apostolate” is a $5 word that means “the work you are sent to do.” You’ll recognize the root word “apostle” in there, which literally means “sent.” All Christians are sent – apostellon – to proclaim the gospel and build up the kingdom. If you are baptized and confirmed, you have solemnly sworn to participate in that mission. Most people who talk about the Second Vatican Council focus on the liturgical changes or confusion afterwards, but one of the most overlooked parts of Vatican II is that they dedicated an entire document to this idea of the apostolate of the laity; that each and every member of the Church is sent to carry out the mission of the Church.
This idea gets lost because so many people confuse it with the idea of “ministry.” A ministry is what someone does in the Church in service to the Church. A priest has a ministry of providing the sacraments and guiding a parish. A sister might have the ministry of teaching children at a Catholic school. Many lay people also have a ministry of working or volunteering in a parish or school to help other Catholics live their faith. But, most lay Catholics won’t ever do “ministry” in that way.
The simplest distinction is that ministry is inward – the Church taking care of and supporting its own members – but the apostolate is outward – building the kingdom and bringing Christ to those who don’t know him as well as they could or should.
Put another way, we don’t want everyone in the parish to be a lector, altar server, or Extraordinary Minister of Communion, to work or volunteer in the parish office. I… most priests are not primarily evangelizers. We are ministers, servants of the rest of the Church so that they can evangelize and spread the kingdom. In some ways, that makes it easier for me to answer the question “what kind of service do I do?” But just because my vocation is more visible doesn’t mean your vocation doesn’t exist. So, what is your apostolate?
Let’s say you don’t have that answer, what can we do about it? I’ve already given you the first step: faith. Have faith not only in God, Jesus, and the Church… have faith that God is really calling you to be holy enough to go to heaven, to be a saint. Start by believing it is possible for you to serve God and others. Start with faith because your apostolate is only fruitful if it is rooted in God’s grace.
Then what? Then make the connection between what you believe and how you live. Your apostolate… your service to God is not something you do apart from daily life, but through it. It isn’t about sprinkling prayers throughout the day, going to Mass once a week, and sometimes serving the poor – although all those things are essential. Apostolate reaches deeper, recognizing that you are leaven in the world, that everything you do can and should be done with and for Christ Jesus. That means doing whatever you do well: farming, housekeeping, engineering, research – whatever your responsibility, do it well for Jesus and the good of others. This requires being intentional and learning to pay attention to God’s presence throughout your day.
But that intentionality goes further. You consider and reflect on how Catholic faith should guide your actions. Catholics ought to show greater integrity in their work, greater respect of coworkers’ human dignity, and a continual willingness to do the right thing, even when it costs us. Without being artificial or dishonest or preachy, you can and should look for ways accompany people in their search for meaning and to share your faith with them. This means periodically picking one or two people in your life, praying for them intentionally, cultivating authentic friendship with them, and sharing your faith through that friendship. There are people I’ll never reach that you work, live, and hang out with all the time. Atheist mechanics might never become friends with me, but they might become friends with another mechanic. If you do not bring Christ to them, maybe no one will.
Finally, what is probably the most distinctive quality of a Catholic “lay apostle” is their attitude toward suffering. It is through his suffering that Jesus “justified many” as the first reading put it. Jesus promises James & John that they will receive glory, but only through their suffering. Every vocation, career, and life comes with suffering. It is unavoidable. What a Catholic can do is use that suffering for the sake of their apostolate. When a Catholic faces their share of suffering with faith, hope, and love, it transforms them and the world around them.
By drawing on God’s grace in their sufferings, lay Catholics ought to demonstrate less cynicism, less resentment, more joy, and more peace than coworkers, colleagues, friends, and family who do not have faith. With confidence in God’s love that no suffering can defeat, they bear witness to a higher way of life in and through the same ordinary trials and tribulations of everyone else. This is at the heart of every truly fruitful apostolate: to make Christ present in the crosses of daily life.
Neither the priest nor the lay Catholic has every answer. We cannot solve every problem. What we can do, however, is face every question and trial the world faces right along with them. Only we do so with a hope this world cannot give. The world wanted a ruler, but Christ did not come to rule; He came to ransom us from this fallen world. One day, he will rule in glory and splendor when the world is made new. But those lost in the world cannot have this hope unless we tell them. That’s our apostolate. So, let’s get to work.