Lay Ministry

It is a real pleasure for me to have been asked to come out to Argusville and spend this time with all of you this morning. My name is Fr. John Sandell. I live in Fargo at Sacred Heart Convent, where l serve as chaplain. My full time job though is as chaplain to Friendship in Fargo. Friendship is a very large agency, sponsored by the Presentation Sisters, located where Villa Nazareth used to be, on south University, providing a wide range of residential and habilitation services to developmentally disabled children and adults in the Fargo area. I also have a part time, weekend assignment to Nativity parish in south Fargo. And the work at Friendship is fascinating, involving, no doubt about it. And Nativity is a fine fine parish, no doubt about that either. But it is still true that in a very real personal sense, the most satisfying years of my priesthood were spent in a small parish about this size, in a small town north of Grafton. St. Thomas was the name of the town. So it feels good to be in that kind of setting again. After all, the life, the mission of a parish is the life, the mission of the Church. And the extent to which we forget that from time to time, and we do, is the extent to which we miss the point from time to time, of our Baptism, our Christianity, our faith.

So that is what we are here to do this morning, to reflect a bit on that fact, on the nature of parish ministry, parish life in general, and to do so as an introduction to some time I understand you will be spending later in the week, looking in particular at some specific ways of exercising that ministry in as effective and satisfying a way as can be done.

I said that the work of the parish is the work, the mission of the Church. And that is true. But it is just not true enough. More must be said. Because it is the work of the Church, it is simply enough, the work of Christ.

And I think if we do nothing else today at all, we have still spent the time well if we can reflect simply on that, let the truth of it sink in to us a bit more deeply. The work that we do, in every aspect of parish ministry, is not simply the work of the parish, or of the priest, or of the co-ordinator, or of some committee on the parish council. It is Christ's own, and we do it on the strength of His word, His call, and we do it in the power of His grace.

Now, when we speak of being called to ministry in the parish, to the taking up of an active role in the life of the parish, what probably pops into mind is the image of being called by some other parishioner who asks you to do this or that particular thing. And at the time that that happens, it may be a little difficult to relate that call to Christ's. It may seem like just another person, somebody you see frequently and know well, asking you to take on yet another job.

Well that's what it may seem like, but that is far from all that is happening. The "Yes" that you say to that person in that call is really an echo of a "Yes", an Amen that your friends and family said for you a number of years ago. And that Amen was spoken for you at the time when you were first claimed by Christ as His own, and set by Him to His mission, at your Baptism. In the baptismal ceremony, immediately after the pouring of the water, there is a brief but very powerful ritual. The priest makes the sign of the cross on the forehead of the child with oil, and says this prayer, "As Christ was appointed Priest, Prophet and King, so may you live always as a member of His Body." And to that your parents and sponsors and family answered Amen. So be it. Yes.

So it is at our baptism that we are committed to a path of faith that involves more than simply an intellectual affirmation of the truths Christ teaches, or a personal willingness to imitate His ethic, His morality, His notion of right and wrong.

It is all of that, certainly, but much more, the faith into which a Christian is baptized is a willingness to take up the responsibility of literally re-generating the presence of Christ in whatever age, whatever setting one finds oneself. And to do all of that in the fullest possible sense, to do what He did, be what He was, have the effect on one's surroundings that He had. That, at the heart of it, is what ministry is. Ministry in any form is really faith given visible flesh and blood, faith acted out, visibly, in the presence of the community, for the sake of the community.

So most simply put, your ministerial role in this parish, no matter what it may be, is genuinely an act of faith. There is an authentically spiritual, an authentically divine dimension to what you do. And that is the point I want to make with a sledge hammer. In whatever you do in this act of faith, in your ministry, you can be absolutely confident of having an effectiveness that goes beyond your own ability. That is the divine dimension. I absolutely, unhesitatingly promise you that good things will be accomplished in this parish because you read, or because you are a Eucharistic minister, or because you stand at the front door and say good morning to people. I also absolutely, unhesitatingly guarantee you that neither you nor I nor anyone else will ever be able to measure very precisely, dependably, just exactly what those good things are. We can guess about them, probably some pretty good guesses, but we will never know with the certainty of a scientist that such and such a good thing happened at such and such a time, because I stood here and said good morning, or read the Scriptures, or handed the communion cup.

But that is not surprising. After all, the practical effects of any act of faith can't be measured, and the minute we start demanding that they should be, we leave the arena of faith. So be utterly confident of this. Your role is a valuable one, and an effective one. You are making the parish a better place to be. A more Christ-like place. Because as you exercise your ministry, Christ is working through you, shaping His parish more and more closely in accord with His design. That design may not always reflect our own, and the timetable may not reflect our own. But that does not matter. It will reflect Christ's.

Now, in all of this theology of ministry, there is really nothing too terribly new. It is at least as old as the Scriptural book Acts of the Apostles. The notion that the community is given the mission, the ministry of Christ, and the power of Christ clearly shaped the church in its earliest years. For a lot of complicated reasons, a good deal of that emphasis got lost over the ensuing centuries. For one thing, as the needs of a rapidly growing church rapidly changed, the range of skills needed to carry out ministry widened and intensified. And naturally enough, the pool of people able to bring to ministry those skills narrowed. This is something of an oversimplification, mind you, but it's true enough. As fewer and fewer people were able to respond to more and more demands for ministerial skill, greater and greater ministerial responsibilities came to be centered in fewer and fewer hands. Not too surprisingly, those fewer hands were largely clerical. Lots of reasons for that, but the upshot of it all was that there grew in the minds of believers, the notion that ministry in general flowed not nearly so much from the from the sacrament of Baptism, as it did from the sacrament of Holy Orders. And as the gap between those doing the ministering and those being ministered to increased, too many times ministry degenerated into literally administration. And again that fell almost exclusively into the hands of the priests.

Well, as I say, lots of reasons why that happened, but however it happened it was wrong. It was based on simply a poor understanding of both sacraments, Baptism and Holy Orders. Well, re-shifting that focus of emphasis back onto Baptism as the prime sacrament of ministerial commission was one of the things that Vatican II accomplished. And once that happened, the shape of the Church was radically changed. Suddenly on the well-ordered doorsteps of rectories all over the world there were thousands and thousands of people with a genuinely divine, genuinely sacramental claim to an ownership of their parish, a role in the shaping of that parish experience, a claim to a share in Christ's own ministry. On the other side of that doorstep, often enough, there was a suddenly bewildered priest who with perfect sincerity believed that he had that commission by virtue of his ordination. And the struggle that followed for a number of years, the struggle to better understand the mind of God in the relationship between ordained and baptized ministers has been a long and sometimes difficult one in the church. But it has worked, or at least it has begun to.

And one of the fruits of that struggle is a time such as this we are introducing this morning. A time for reflecting, talking and listening about ministry. Not just how can the people of the parish help father with his work, but much more intensely, much more accurately, how can the people of the Church do what they are called by Christ, empowered by Christ to do, to care for one another in the company of His people.

So far I've been using the word "ministry" in a pretty general way. You will be focusing all of this much more sharply, more specifically next Wednesday. But we can start now. What constitutes ministry, and what doesn't? That is not always an easy question to answer. As particular needs and sensitivities change, so to does the shape of ministry. But really, just that gives us the beginning of an answer. Ministry is simply enough, meeting the needs of God's people. The essence of that never changes. That is as firmly founded as is Baptism itself. The essence of it is to do what Christ did, be what He was, have on one's surroundings the effect that He had. But what specific offices, functions fall under that sacramental commission, that may well change. And the test of the validity of any of them is a very simple one...how well does this or that function actually conform to what Christ did and was. What effect does it have, or even is it geared to have, because as I said the actual measureable effect immediately. It is after all, an act of grace.

Well, the baptismal ceremony uses three words that are useful here. Three titles traditionally given to Christ. Priest, Prophet, and King. That is what He was. And by virtue of that, what He did can be described in three more traditional words...Teach, Govern, Sanctify. You may remember those words from your old Baltimore catechism. Now, these are human words, and they are not perfect. They don't fully define the notion of ministry. No human words can define a grace. But they work pretty well, nonetheless, as a description of the ministry of Christ, and so of our own. And these roles are fairly simply defined. Teaching, or the prophetic role means just what it sounds like. Including, but certainly not limited to, formal classroom teaching of religion, it takes in anything really that helps make the mind of God clearer to His people. So parental teaching in the home, conversations with friends, the example, the living witness we give as to the mind of God, all of that can be genuinely ministerial. Prophecy adds too, the notion of commenting on the world, even judging it in the light of the mind of God. Speaking out clearly, insistently in support of what is right, and in condemnation of what is not. That too is a baptismal role.

Sanctify, or the priestly function means literally to make holy, and it refers primarily to worship, to prayer. Personal prayer, public prayer, liturgical prayer are genuinely baptismal ministries. In Scriptures the notion of holiness has the sense of being set apart for God, being different, other than the world, or secular society. So here might well be considered the whole area of morality as a ministry, personal morality, social morality. The people of God must be clearly, openly different from those who are not. And underlining that difference, living it out in full view of the world, is genuinely and authentically ministerial.

And Govern, or the Kingly role. It means most broadly to bring order, as God would have it be, into whatever situation in which we find ourselves, through the exercise of whatever power, ability, authority we may have at our disposal. Governance is a very difficult role. It is hard work, and usually not very glamorous or rewarding, in terms of appreciation or popularity. It means seeing that good things get done. Governance differs from teaching in that teaching says, "This is the way it should be," where governance says "This is the way it should be, because whatever authority, whatever power I may have, will be applied to make it happen." All of that can be institutional governance, such as the nuts and bolts work of the parish council, bookkeeping, bulletin organization and production, organizing ministers of Eucharist, hospitality, servers, on and on. Can be personal governance. Such as the parent who is personal confronted by a child who says quite naturally and predictably, "I'm not going to church or CCD anymore." And the parent responds, ''Oh yes you are." And the kid says "Oh yeah, why?" And the parent says, "Well if it comes to that, for no other reason than that I'm bigger than you are." I know that parents, especially today, it seems, always seem to feel they are such failures if they have to resort to something like that. Well, they are not failures at all. The exercise of one's authority, one's power, even if that power is nothing more sophisticated than size, if that is what is needed, is a genuinely baptismal ministry. So, to impose order, to make things happen as they should, is the ministry of governance. The ministry of ability, of authority, really.

Well, pretty clearly, any particular ministry could fit in under really any of those three headings, and be so understood perfectly validly. But I do think those three words can help a person begin to answer, "Just how does what I do fit in to the overall scheme of grace. Where does my contribution plug in?"

So. As I said, I understand that that is just what you will be considering in more detail on Wednesday evening, so I will close with just this thought. These are exciting times for believers. The Holy Spirit is at work in His world, re-shaping the face of His Church, re-investing His own power in the ministry, the service of all of those who follow Him. Let us, each of us, be sure that we do.

Ministry Day presentation given at St. William's Catholic Church, Argusville, North Dakota on 22 October 1989.