Wednesday of the Twenty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

Red, white and blue Christmas
in the silent auction

For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ your life appears,
then you too will appear with him in glory.

These lines from Saint Paul’s letter to the Colossians are so beautiful and dense with meaning it almost hurts to try to comment on them. I feel like a tourist describing the Grand Canyon. All the words have already been used and none do justice to the reality.

The Christian’s life-source is hidden from the world. They really don’t know where we come from. When we try to explain it, we meet incomprehension and skepticism at best; or, at worse, hostility.

Returning to the Catechism of the Catholic Church and its chapter on the Laity (Paragraphs 897-913) we recall the anointing of Baptism,

He (God the Father) now anoints you with the chrism of salvation. As Christ was anointed Priest, Prophet, and King, so may you live always as a member of his body, sharing everlasting life.

Regarding the office of priest, the Catechism states: 

For all their works, prayers, and apostolic undertakings, family and married life, daily work, relaxation of mind and body, if they are accomplished in the Spirit - indeed even the hardships of life if patiently born - all these become spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

In this same letter to the Colossians (3:17) Saint Paul will say, “And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

The Church is the sacred presence of Jesus in the world and this is nowhere so obvious as in the sacred presence of lay folks’ living with reverence, modesty and dignity, practicing mercy and justice toward family, friends, neighbors and enemies.  The world would be an unhappy place indeed without our presence.

Regarding the office of prophet, the Catechism states:

Lay people also fulfill their prophetic mission by evangelization, "that is, the proclamation of Christ by word and the testimony of life." For lay people, "this evangelization . . . acquires a specific property and peculiar efficacy because it is accomplished in the ordinary circumstances of the world."

I should add the Christian’s refusal to accept abortion, waste and violence as normal is a prophetic gesture. The world may not agree with us but it will often admire our principles.

Regarding the office of king, the Catechism states:

Moreover, by uniting their forces let the laity so remedy the institutions and conditions of the world when the latter are an inducement to sin, that these may be conformed to the norms of justice, favoring rather than hindering the practice of virtue. By so doing they will impregnate culture and human works with a moral value.

Does the world see us as priests, prophets and kings? Certainly not; nor can they recognize Jesus as such. And how those Christian characteristics might be revealed in the end time, we need not concern ourselves.