In celebration of the Amoris Laetitia Family Year, Universitas republishes the texts of the “Executive Summaries,” one-page evangelization flyers initiated by Dr. Raul Nidoy, faculty member of UA&P, Director of Formation of Parents for Education Foundation (PAREF) and author of Jesus-Centered: Guide to the Happiest Life. The leaflets, which have been printed and shared thousands of times here and abroad, contain key points of Catholic doctrine on topics such as family and chastity, social responsibility, the foundations of the faith, and encountering Jesus. Schools, parishes, and organizations have used the leaflets as a tool for promoting Church teachings. The Executive Summaries can be downloaded here.
WHAT’S MY MISSION?
Not just secret agents, but everyone is eager and excited to know their mission orders – the objectives and tasks we are sent to accomplish, the contribution people expect of us, the meaning and purpose of our life.
When we were baptized, says the Bible, we “put on Christ.” That is why we can exclaim, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” (Gal 3:20; 2:20) Christ lives in me! “We have become not just Christians, but Christ himself,” cried St. Augustine. (CCC 795) Who is Christ who lives in me? Jesus Christ is God himself who became man for only one mission: to save all men from sin and make us one with God. The name of Jesus means “God saves”. And the word christ means “messiah”, people who have been consecrated by God for a saving mission: priests, prophets, and kings.
As another Christ, we have only one mission: to bring all men to love God with all their strength, and we have a responsibility to exercise his three offices that fulfil his one mission. These offices are the solutions to the great evils all men suffer due to sin. Our priestly office addresses the lack of sanctifying grace, a share in God’s life, without which we cannot enter heaven. Our prophetic office solves people’s ignorance, lack of knowledge of God and his plan, “the origin of all moral deviations”. (CCC 2087) Our kingly office addresses our wayward tendencies and passions.
If a Christian does not exercise Christ’s mission and responsibilities, he is like salt that “has lost its taste,” said Jesus. “It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men.” (Mt 5:13)
OUR SPECIAL VOCATION: Let your light shine before men
Christ told us: “You are the light of the world,” and so the Christian laity’s special vocation that we should know best is “to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in secular affairs and directing them according to God’s will … to enlighten and put in order all things in the world.” (CCC 898)
It is in the midst of our world, our home, the office, the streets, in places of entertainment, in the mall, in government, business, and media, that we are called to find God, and to make Christ’s superabundant love, mercy and wisdom permeate all things. We have “the preeminent responsibility to work so that the divine message of salvation may be known and accepted by all men throughout the earth.” (Vat II, AA; CCC 900)
To accomplish this, we are called to take initiative: not to wait passively for others to make a move, but to take the first step in making things happen, beginning a chain of events that can Christianize the world. We are tasked to be creative: “discovering or inventing the means for permeating social, political, and economic realities” with the beauty, harmony and supreme joy that comes from the fullness of love and truth. (CCC 900)
OUR PRIESTLY OFFICE: Union with Jesus, praying and offering sacrifices to sanctify the world from within
We will be able to put order in the world only if we are put order in our lives. If we put God first in everything, others second and ourselves last. “He who abides in me, and I in him, bears much fruit,” Jesus told us. “For without me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5). If we are intimately one with Jesus, all our “works, prayers, and apostolic undertakings, family and married life, daily work, relaxation of mind and body, even the hardships of life patiently born – all these become spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God.” By offering all these at Mass, we take part in the Sacrifice of Christ on the cross that saves all men through time. (CCC 901) The saints, who allow God to work by praying always, are the best reformers of society.
The one purpose of our life is to love God with all our heart, a love that impels us to know him deeply: to meditate on his teachings that come to us through his Church, especially its Bible and Catechism, to go frequently to confession and the Eucharist, where his love is poured into us. “The love of Christ urges us,” sets us on fire, impelling us to save many souls. (CCC 864)
OUR PROPHETIC OFFICE: Evangelizing and teaching the faith
“Thanks solely to this encounter with God’s love, which blossoms into an enriching friendship, we are liberated.” taught Pope Francis. We are freed from sin and inner emptiness, and we are filled with the joy of the truth. “For if we have received the love which restores meaning to our lives, how can we fail to share that love with others?”
It is above all with a life lived in God who is Love that we evangelize, and a key part of this life is to obey his last command: Go and make disciples of all nations… teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. (Mt 28:19-20) This Great Commission still echoes, and should be echoed by us to many Catholics who have forgotten it.
Pope Francis stressed: Every Christian is challenged, here and now, to be actively engaged in evangelization…What about you? … Sharing our enthusiasm “falls to each of us as a daily responsibility… bringing the Gospel to the people we meet, whether they be our neighbors or complete strangers. This takes place in the middle of a conversation… on the street, in a city square, during work, on a journey.” Training in this “should start with the children’s earliest education. Parents should teach them little by little to be solicitous for the material and spiritual needs of their neighbour,” recalling that the spiritual is above the material. (Vat II; Mt 4:4)
As prophets who speak of Christ, it is very important that we often meet Christ, to learn him well in the four parts of his Church’s Catechism (the Creed, Sacraments, Morality and Prayer) and be involved in helping people meet him in catechesis. First, in our family through family Sunday school, and then to as many people as we can reach: by teaching, spreading catechetical materials and using the means of social communication. The Church’s “increase in numbers, even more her inner growth and correspondence with God’s plan depend essentially on catechesis.” (CCC 7)
OUR KINGLY OFFICE: Correcting common practices that breed sins, and effectively permeating education, culture, media, business and government, and other social institutions with true moral values
Our first duty as kings is to rule over our self. Christ, the true King, reigns by giving his life on the cross in obedience to the Father, and through his sacraments he sends us his powerful graces to “deny ourselves” and to “overcome the reign of sin”. “That man is rightly called a king who makes his own body an obedient subject and, by governing himself with suitable rigor, refuses to let his passions breed rebellion in his soul.” (CCC 908)
“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.” (CCC 909)
Starting in their family and workplace, citizens should take part in public life as far as possible. (Comp 410) We are called to make the greatest possible impact, helping people to understand and live true moral values: caring for the poor, upholding the truth, fighting corruption and excessive inequality, respect for life and human dignity, support for marriage and the family, working for the common good, reverence for human sexuality, support for religion, social justice, respecting rights and freedom, promoting virtue, care for the environment, and the social principles of solidarity and subsidiarity. Stress should be given to a “hierarchy of values, which subordinates physical and instinctual dimensions to interior and spiritual ones.” (CCC 1886) With our zeal, all these should fill up the community, media, university and government. And we do so with secular and scientific reasoning, as they are all truths of the natural law that will surely make human life flourish.#
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