Vocation and Mission of the Lay Faithful

In the prayers he offered every morning to the Lord at the offering of the chalice, his first thought was of the branch of Cooperators.

“So that this world can be transformed with the spirit of the Beatitudes.”

Today there is the desire of individuals and of groups to participate in the spirituality and specific mission of Institutes of Consecrated Life as one of the many complements of vocations.

OUR CALL TO HOLINESS AND MISSION

We are invited to see ourselves in terms of who and what we are, not in terms of what we lack.

PARTNERS IN MISSIONTo help us embrace the

call to go into the world, we need to avoid a false distinction between the sacred and the secular.

Pauline Cooperators

are recognized

as full sharers in

the responsibility

for the Pauline

mission.

Christfideles Laicisays that the lay faithful have the primary responsibility for the transformation of the world their specific vocation…

"A proper understanding [of the mission and responsibility of lay Christians in the Church and in the world] can only be found in the living context of the Church as communion.”

Christifideles Laici, # 18

Formation has a number of purposes

Initial Formation Program

• Deepens the person’s understanding of their Baptismal call to proclaim the Gospel as an apostle of Jesus Christ

• Refines that call by giving it purpose and direction

• Specifies the call by spelling out its Pauline dimension

Ongoing Formation Program

• Deepens the apostle's awareness of being Church• Focuses the sense of communion that leads to

mission• Enlightens the apostle's life of prayer• Imparts apostolic insights and skills• Increases understanding of the Church's life and

teaching• Creates a Pauline context or style to apostolic work• Offers support, encouragement and affirmation in

apostolic work• Favors personal and collective growth• Provides opportunities for apostolate

pauline cooperators

“Enrollment in the cooperators is preceded by suitable instruction about the identity and mission of the Pauline Family, and by an adequate period of experience in the spiritual and apostolic life.” Statutes 10.1

Period of Inquiry

Session 1: Encountering Christ With Paul Session 2: To Love is To Fulfill the Law Session 3: “Be Persevering in Your Prayers”

Session 4: Collaboration With the Pauline Family Session 5: Evangelization With the Media of Communication

Session 6: The Pauline Charism

Time of Preparation

Session 1 Purpose of the Pauline LifeSession 2 Pauline Prayer LifeSession 3 Pauline EvangelizationSession 4 Pauline CharismSession 5 “That Through the Church the Manifold

Wisdom of God be Made Known”Session 6 The Mission of the LaitySession 7 “That Christ May Live in Me.”Session 8 Mary, Queen of the First Apostles and the

Apostles of all TimesSession 9 St. Paul the Apostle, Preacher of TruthSession 10 The Word of God and the EucharistSession 11 “That They May be One.”Session 12 Organization of the Pauline Cooperators

Initial requirements to attend the Period of Inquiry

• To be of good moral standing

• A well balanced personality, spiritually & psychologically

• Active participation in a church

• A spirit of hope and optimism

• A desire for personal spiritual and apostolic growth

• The desire and capacity to imbibe the Pauline Charism

The distance formation program

Heavenly Father,grant me the grace to fulfill my callingBy following your way of incarnate loveThat I might make you knownTo those I seek to serve in your nameLet me copy you, Jesus – Let me take from the

Church, the saints,Theology, literature, journalism, as bread is taken from a baker,but convert it into my flesh and blood and give it to

those I serveAnd share with them your food for the journeySo that they will come to you.

Let me absorb your life Jesus – let me live youSo that others may live you.Holy Spirit, transform me, make me way, truth and

life For my brothers and sisters. (Cf. Alberione, Jesus:

Way, Truth and Life, 159) “Prepare our hearts, Mary, and obtain for us the

Holy Spirit.” AlberioneHoly Spirit, you who guarantee of human and

spiritual growth, be with us and guide us; water the seed of the Charism planted in our lives. Transform us, so that it is no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us.

Spirituality is founded on becoming “new creatures in baptism and on being one in the Body of Christ.

We express with our life the holiness, communion and mission of the Church (VC 31).

Communion of life becomes

a “sign for the world and an

attractive force that

leads to belief in Christ.”

We take the attitude of witness with a fixed direction for journey to the Father.

A mystic in the Pauline sense is one who has experienced the mystery. Immersed, as in baptism.

The mystic is integrated and realizes the journey in charity - the passage to the interior to live the dynamic gift of self donation - transformed by charity - the Eucharist.

Knowing the mystery - taking on the obligation of our baptism. We can be sacramentallized but not evangelized.

Evangelize - life, culture, mind, will, heart, mission, place of mission etc.

Come and see - John 8: Who are you? Leave all and go on a journey. Leave all your securities. Come - See - Believe.

“One who saw and his testimony is true.” “That which we have seen, touched, heard...”

The common root of all the People of God is the baptism that calls all to holiness, communion and mission according to our state in life.

(VC 41.46; 30-31; MR 4-5)

To evangelize in the various situations in which we find ourselves means finding the strength to maintain alive and clear the awareness of our Christian identity and remembering that the power of God is manifest in the weakness of the cross.

By Carla Romano, Pauline Cooperator - Italy

“The gift of his Spirit and his love – are meant for each and every people and culture, in order to bring them all into unity after the example of the perfect unity existing in the Triune God.

Pope John Paul II

Just as it is not Paul who does everything for everyone –

it is Christ who became everything for everyone -

so we as apostles can only announce this.

We are called upon to experience God’s love through the faith in the

risen Christ and the contemplation of his

face, which reveals the face of the Father.

Pope John Paul, in his address to the Society of St. Paul repeated Blessed Alberione's most famous words:

"If St. Paul was alive, he would continue to burn with a double flame: zeal for God and Christ, as well as for men of all countries. And for them to be able to hear him, he would climb the highest pulpits and multiply his words with the means of present progress: press, cinema, radio, television."

Come to me, all of you.