Chapter Nine
THAT FINAL LESSON: IMPORTANCE OF THE LAITY
Jesus Himself, as we have repeated, compared the delay in reaction to the requests of His Sacred Heart to the delay in responding to those of his Mother's Immaculate Heart. All became "transparent and comprehensible" to the Holy Father "in the light of history and the signs of the times."
What was the final lesson of the history of response to the requests of the Sacred Heart? It was the intervention of lay persons. And this lesson is not merely historical.
Appearing in our time as Our Lady of All Nations, Queen of the World, Our Lady foretold Her victory and said: "The clergy are too few...mobilize the laity."
At the same time, God gave the world a continuing miracle in the person of Marthe Robin, who lived thirty years solely on the Eucharist, and who said: "The laity will renew the Church."
Great Hope
It is one of the greatest lessons and messages of our time that God inspired the laity, after more than two hundred years of widespread suffering in the wake of the refusal to obey the Sacred Heart, to do two things: to ask the Archbishop to intervene and offer to help.
Our one great hope is that the laity will do the same now.
In his apostolic letter for the new millennium, the Pope saw three main signs of hope in the Church: deeper commitment to the cause of Christian unity, and "greater attention to the voice of the Holy Spirit, through acceptance of charisms and promotion of the laity."
Since the second Vatican Council, there has been a virtual explosion of lay involvement in the life of the Church. In a moment, we will cite a few in the hope that others may be inspired. But first, let us emphasize that this call is not just from Our Lady of All Nations, or from mystics like Marthe Robin, or from the example of the laymen who broke the two hundred year lack of response to the requests of the Sacred Heart.
It is the call of the Holy Spirit. It is the call of the Church.
Modern Conditions Demand It
In the very opening statement of its Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, the Council said: "Modern conditions demand that the lay apostolate be thoroughly broadened and intensified."
The Council said that "an indication of this manifold and pressing need is the unmistakable work of the Holy Spirit in making the Laity today more conscious of their own responsibility."
The Holy Spirit, Who inspired Pope John XXIII to convene the second Vatican Council (as the Pope himself declared), was providing for this present time when the role of the laity will be of supreme importance. The Council has reminded EVERY Catholic that it is not just up to the clergy, but to each and every one of us as "sharers in the priestly, prophetic, and royal office of Christ" (i. 2).
In the Light of Fatima
The message of Fatima is like a flood of light over this era of the second Vatican Council. Our Lady stooped down to children, and called them to join Her in saving the world -in bringing about the triumph of the Church, for that is what is meant in Her promise of the triumph of Her Immaculate Heart.
She told them to pray the Rosary. She told them to think of Her Immaculate Heart-the ultimate symbol of purity- and to be united to that Heart. She held the Scapular out of the sky as She performed a "great miracle so that all may believe."
As a loving Mother, She reduces it all down to the level of little children-seven, nine, and ten years of age, two of whom have already been declared to be in Heaven. We
have thought of the Fatima message in the terms of bringing an end to world communism and preventing atomic war. It is time we began thinking of it in terms of Christifideles Laici, issued December 30, 1988, by Pope John Paul II (English translation published by the Daughters of St. Paul), in which the Holy Father sees a revitalized, responsible laity as the greatest need of our time.
His Holiness applies to lay Catholics the words of Our Lord: "Why do you stand here idle all the day?... You, too, go into My Vineyard." (Mt 20:3-4). The entire last part of the Pope's message calls for a continual process of development of holiness in the laity, and of acceptance of its responsibility.
I have written an entire book on this subject titled You, Too!. I do not wish to belabor it here other than to say that as the Holy Father sees the recognition of charisms, and the response of the laity, as two of the three main signs of hope in the Church, that hope is gone if we ignore the charisms and if the laity do NOT respond. The time for saying it is up to the Pope, it is up to the bishops, it is up to the priests, is over.
It is up to us. God will hold us responsible.
The consequences of our failure to respond, of which we shall speak in a moment, are terrible almost beyond imagining.
This and other books by John M. Haffert
God's
Final Effort | Too Late? | The Day I Didn't Die