What to do with a life
How is anyone supposed to know?
"All Christians in any state or walk of life are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of charity." LG 40 # 2. All are called to holiness: "Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." Mt 5:48.
In order to reach this perfection the faithful should use the strength dealt out to them by Christ's gift, so that . . . doing the will of the Father in everything, they may wholeheartedly devote themselves to the glory of God and to the service of their neighbor. Thus the holiness of the People of God will grow in fruitful abundance, as is clearly shown in the history of the Church through the lives of so many saints. LG 40 # 2.
Spiritual progress tends toward ever more intimate union with Christ. This union is called "mystical" because it participates in the mystery of Christ through the sacraments - "the holy mysteries" - and, in him, in the mystery of the Holy Trinity. God calls us all to this intimate union with him, even if the special graces or extraordinary signs of this mystical life are granted only to some for the sake of manifesting the gratuitous gift given to all.
The way of perfection passes by way of the Cross. There is no holiness without renunciation and spiritual battle. Cf. 2 Tim 4. Spiritual progress entails the ascesis and mortification that gradually lead to living in the peace and joy of the Beatitudes:
He who climbs never stops going from beginning to beginning, through beginnings that have no end. He never stops desiring what he already knows. St. Gregory of Nyssa, Hom. in Cant. 8: PG — Patrologia Graeca (Migne)C.
The children of our holy mother the Church rightly hope for the grace of final perseverance and the recompense of God their Father for the good works accomplished with his grace in communion with Jesus. Cf. Council of Trent (1547): DS — Denzinger–Schönmetzer (Enchiridion Symbolorum). Keeping the same rule of life, believers share the "blessed hope" of those whom the divine mercy gathers into the "holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." Rev 21:2.
Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist are sacraments of Christian initiation. They ground the common vocation of all Christ's disciples, a vocation to holiness and to the mission of evangelizing the world. They confer the graces needed for the life according to the Spirit during this life as pilgrims on the march towards the homeland.
Two other sacraments, Holy Orders and Matrimony, are directed towards the salvation of others; if they contribute as well to personal salvation, it is through service to others that they do so. They confer a particular mission in the Church and serve to build up the People of God.
Through these sacraments those already consecrated by Baptism and Confirmation Cf. LG 10. for the common priesthood of all the faithful can receive particular consecrations. Those who receive the sacrament of Holy Orders are consecrated in Christ's name "to feed the Church by the word and grace of God." LG 11 # 2. On their part, "Christian spouses are fortified and, as it were, consecrated for the duties and dignity of their state by a special sacrament." GS 48 # 2.
"By reason of their special vocation it belongs to the laity to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to God's will.... It pertains to them in a special way so to illuminate and order all temporal things with which they are closely associated that these may always be effected and grow according to Christ and maybe to the glory of the Creator and Redeemer." LG 31 # 2.
The initiative of lay Christians is necessary especially when the matter involves discovering or inventing the means for permeating social, political, and economic realities with the demands of Christian doctrine and life. This initiative is a normal element of the life of the Church: Lay believers are in the front line of Church life; for them the Church is the animating principle of human society. Therefore, they in particular ought to have an ever-clearer consciousness not only of belonging to the Church, but of being the Church, that is to say, the community of the faithful on earth under the leadership of the Pope, the common Head, and of the bishops in communion with him. They are the Church. Pius XII, Discourse, February 20, 1946: AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 38 (1946) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1946) 149; quoted by John Paul II, CL 9.
Since, like all the faithful, lay Christians are entrusted by God with the apostolate by virtue of their Baptism and Confirmation, they have the right and duty, individually or grouped in associations, to work so that the divine message of salvation may be known and accepted by all men throughout the earth. This duty is the more pressing when it is only through them that men can hear the Gospel and know Christ. Their activity in ecclesial communities is so necessary that, for the most part, the apostolate of the pastors cannot be fully effective without it. Cf. LG 33. The participation of lay people in Christ's priestly office
Becoming a disciple of Jesus means accepting the invitation to belong to God's family, to live in conformity with His way of life: "For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother." Mt 12:49. Parents should welcome and respect with joy and thanksgiving the Lord's call to one of their children to follow him in virginity for the sake of the Kingdom in the consecrated life or in priestly ministry.
The essential characteristic of the lay faithful who work in the Lord's vineyard (cf. Mt 20:1-16) is the secular nature of their Christian discipleship, which is carried out precisely in the world. “It belongs to the laity to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to God's will” Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, 31: AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 57 (1965) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1965), 37.. By Baptism, the laity are incorporated into Christ and are made participants in his life and mission according to their specific identity. “The term ‘laity' is here understood to mean all the faithful except those in Holy Orders and those who belong to a religious state approved by the Church. That is, the faithful who, by Baptism are incorporated into Christ, are placed in the People of God and in their own way share the priestly, prophetic and kingly office of Christ, and to the best of their ability carry on the mission of the whole Christian people in the Church and in the world” Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, 31: AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 57 (1965) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1965), 37..
The identity of the lay faithful is born in and nourished by the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation and the Eucharist. Baptism conforms the person to Christ, Son of the Father, first-born of every creature, sent to all as Teacher and Redeemer. Confirmation configures the individual to Christ, sent to give new life to creation and to every being through the outpouring of his Spirit. The Eucharist makes the believer a participant in the unique and perfect sacrifice that Christ offered to the Father, in his own flesh, for the salvation of the world. Lay Catholics are disciples of Christ starting with the sacraments, that is, by virtue of what God has wrought in them, marking them with the very image of his Son Jesus Christ. It is from this divine gift of grace, and not from human concession, that is born the threefold “munus” (gift and duty) that characterizes the lay person as prophet, priest and king, according to his secular nature.
It is the proper duty of the lay faithful to proclaim the Gospel with an exemplary witness of life rooted in Christ and lived in temporal realities: the family; professional commitment in the world of work, culture, science and research; the exercise of social, economic and political responsibilities. All secular human realities — both personal and social, including various environments and historical situations, as well as structures and institutions — are the context in which the lay Christian lives and works. These realities are places where God's love is received; the commitment of the lay faithful must correspond to this vision and is to be considered an expression of evangelical charity; “for the lay faithful to be present and active in the world is not only an anthropological and sociological reality, but in a specific way, a theological and ecclesiological reality as well” John Paul II, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles Laici, 15: AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 81 (1989) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1989), 415..