From the beginning of the account of the creation, the earthly mission of man, and, in him, the mission of all humanity, is expressed by God himself:
God said: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” God said: “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have diem for food…”(Gen. 1:26-29).
So the nature of this mission emerges clearly and is defined in practical terms:
—man is called to be fruitful and multiply
—to occupy the whole earth
—to discover and use all the animal, vegetable mineral riches of the earth and
—to establish his mastery over all created forces
—to manage all the goods of the earth
—to ‘discover the Creator through his works and to render homage to him.
From this moment, God addresses man as a person created in his own image and likeness, entrusted by him with the execution of the creative plan, of which God is the principle and the end. In the perspective of the Old Testament, ‘the works of creation are the normal environment through which human comprehension recognizes its Creator. How very many times in the Old Testament God comes back to this mission, glorifying it and showering it with his blessings, whether it is a matter of individual people or of his whole people. And how often the patriarchs, prophets and psalmists celebrate its grandeur, beauty and holiness. This divine mandate, freely confided to man and inspired by the Fathers goodness, gives a sacred, religious, apostolic character to the whole of man’s earthly existence.
— This mission belongs exclusively to man because he is a human being engaged in secular, temporal activities which, at the same time, make up a divine, spiritual, eternal vocation.
—This mission is absolutely necessary in the execution of God’s loving design. In order to manifest himself and make himself known, God freely willed to depend on man’s faithfulness and to have confidence in his free response.
In this sense, we can say that man cannot be replaced in this mission, because God has willed to use him: God needs his collaboration, his work, his genius, his social, economic and political activities, his science and technology, his intelligence and culture.
—It must be realized as well that this mission is fundamental, of prime importance, the essential basis of every mission to come.
And so the mission entrusted by God to humanity at the very moment of the creation constitutes the essential dignity of human nature, of which the Church reminds us every day in the Offertory of the Mass: ‘O God, who in a wonderful manner created and ennobled human nature …’ This nobility, this dignity, begin on earth and in time, to be carried through into heaven and perfected in eternity, face to face with God.
Sinful man refused and still goes on refusing his divine mission. Corrupting his own nature in this way, he disturbs the temporal and eternal order of God’s loving plan, and in answering the divine confidence with pride and egotism, he offends God and introduces sin into his soul—original sin, actual sin, personal and social sin— with all their disastrous consequences, both temporal and eternal.
However, sin has not abolished the fundamental mission; God’s loving plan has not changed; it is still the basis of human life and dignity. What is more, sin was the ‘felix culpa’ and ‘necessarium peccatum’—happy fault and necessary sin—says the liturgy; it gave God the opportunity of revealing still more deeply the mystery of his love, by placing the redemption at the heart of creation: ‘O God, who in a wonderful manner created and ennobled human nature, and still more wonderfully renewed it.. ‘ The Word of God, in being made flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and in becoming the Man-God, has merited through his life, death, resurrection and ascension, the expiation and the forgiveness of sins. And more than that, the divinization of human nature has been made possible through participation in Christ’s personal life, his doctrine, his grace and his works. God has willed this new plan of love for the whole of mankind in every age and in every continent. ‘A light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to thy people Israel'(Luke 2 : 32).
This is not a mystery which reaches man from afar off, in an abstract way; it is revealed through the most intimate and personal presence of God, for it is Christ’s desire truly to live and work in each man—’It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me’, says St Paul (Gal. 2:20)—he desires all men to be united to him and to form with him his Mystical Body.
This is how the logic of the divine plan works. The Church is born of the redemption and commissioned to bring the person and the life of Christ to all men, united in a Christian, apostolic and missionary community. And in this Church, the hierarchy is named and consecrated by Christ himself. From the Church too, guided and animated by the hierarchy, all Christians derive their apostolic role: they are called to collaborate in the spreading of Christ’s reign, and for this they must be radiant witnesses to Christ in their own lives and amongst all their brothers whom they meet in the course of daily life, even to the ends of the earth.
The whole of redemptive action, however, does not replace or put an end to the primary human mission given to man by God. Christ could stay nailed to the Cross till the end of time, all men could be baptized, could pray and communicate—but this alone does not realize God’s loving design in creation.
It is certain that without the redemption continued and perfected in the Mystical Body, all the endeavours of the human race would be disrupted, threatened, doomed to failure, because they are tainted with error and sin. Christ and the Church would undoubtedly help individual Christians, and through them all men, to live by his grace and his doctrine in order to ensure their salvation; without doubt, through this very presence and influence they would enable all human institutions to extend God’s kingdom and spread his justice and charity on earth as it is in heaven. But this Christian impetus is not enough in itself, it must be made incarnate in the whole of human life, personal and collective.
In order that life may spread on earth according to God’s will and the fundamental plan of his creation, man must procreate, and must work: science, technology, economy, education and politics, all are needed. And in order that this human, temporal life may lead to the total happiness of the human race, we need the message and the life of Christ, his love, his conception of life, and the morality and civilization that they have inspired.
Without separating them, we can therefore make a distinction between man’s two vocations: one human and the other divine.
Man has a vocation, a human mission, which corresponds directly to God’s plan in the creation, but is aided, enlightened and guided by the grace and presence of Christ and sustained by its union with the whole of the Church. This mission, common to all men and carried out in secular institutions, is a divine sacred mission, historically indivisible from the other, which is its leaven and fermentation. Man also possesses a supernatural vocation which stems directly from God’s plan in the redemption. It aims at placing the Christian ferment in the human mission. It aims explicitly at ensuring the presence of Christ, his life and his message, in souls and institutions. It seeks above all to reveal and develop the sources of this presence: interior, supernatural and sacramental, liturgical and hierarchical.
But in practice, this double mission that I have tried to differentiate is one and indivisible in the Christian— in Christian society; and even in society that is simply human and is called to become Christian. This fact must be taken into account above all in the field of education: any Christian education which disregards its human, secular mission, is in danger of being ineffectual, ill-adapted to its task in the world and disincarnate; similarly any human education is in danger of being falsified, warped and truncated, if it is not imbued with the Christian spirit. The same goes for missionary action which cannot afford to neglect all the divine elements existing in non-Christian cultures and religions, but which by relating them to doctrine and calling on human co-operation is enriched by these new aspects which had not previously been discovered or assimilated. This promotes mutual understanding, destroys prejudice and opposition and opens the way to the Spirit of truth and love.
In determining the authority on which the mission depends, and the manner of its dependence, it is important to distinguish between the two aspects of the mission.
When all is said and done, the human mission is dependent on God. This is obvious. But in everyday life it depends directly on man, who is guided by God and enlightened by his conscience. The human person is responsible for it: the father of the family, the worker, the scholar, the technician, the manufacturer, the trade-union leader, the citizen, the state authorities.
The Christian mission depends directly on Christ, and on his Church which continues him. In his public and private life, the Christian carries it out under his own responsibility without involving that of religious authority, which does however retain the right and the duty to enlighten and sanction his conduct. This is the same for all men, individually or collectively, in private or public life.
The human mission, however, is not exclusively the domain of man and the secular community. The Church must also interest herself in it, because often Christian morality is involved. She does this especially in the field of education, social action and charitable works, either by herself or through Christians who are individually or collectively mandated as religious authority sees fit. She most certainly can and must judge and direct the human activities of Christians from the moral and spiritual point of view.
Can every human mission, seen in the perspective of God’s plan and animated by his grace, in so far as it answers God’s call to extend his kingdom in and through creation, be called an apostolate? Can one talk in this way about the apostolate of the doctor, who carries out his medical practice in a disinterested way, or about the apostolate of the scholar, the father and mother of a family, the manufacturer and the worker, the statesman?
I have always believed that one can. I have repeat over and over again, for forty years, that this apostolate is essential, irreplaceable, of prime importance. Of course, its degree of apostolic value will depend on each individual conscience. And it is obvious that the light and the help of grace play a leading part here. ‘And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher? … But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed they have; for their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world’ (Rom. 10:15-18). But it is often a mystery, and for this reason, who can set up to judge it? How can this grace, which comes from Christ alone, find its way into the souls of men, into an individual soul? This mystery must be at once respected and marvelled at, discovered and trusted. And the movements of the lay apostolate, far from disregarding this mystery, ought to fold in it their primary sphere to survey and work in.
The total Christian mission of each man must be called an apostolate. This is the distinctive characteristic of the Christian: he has received and accepted the life of Christ, and this life is a mission. Thus, his total life is at the service of Christ himself; especially in those aspects which touch him exclusively: i.e. his personal, social, professional and temporal vocation. In every true Christian the human and Christian mission is one and indivisible; although its activities stem from a twofold authority, they are in him totally, entirely apostolic.
The human mission certainly does not absorb the whole of the Christian’s apostolate. Moreover, he cannot fulfil it in this spirit without being connected with and rooted in the sources and all the other vital elements which he can only find in the Church and in the ecclesiastical forms of the apostolate.
It is, among others, in the ecclesiastical and parish communities that the very sources of his apostolate are to be found, and he must draw his nourishment from them, striving to become an apostle among his brothers and even among non-Christians. In this basic Christian community, the parish, he will participate, as far as the duties of his state of life permit him, in the common apostolate of all the members of the Mystical Body, strengthening by his zeal and fervour the apostolic and missionary dynamism of the Church, which must be the leaven of the world.
But to me it seems timely, in fact urgent, to insist today on the apostolic value of the human mission of each lay Christian. It is to this field above all that laymen must bring their witness and manifest their sanctity. Too often they have had an inferiority complex which has handicapped them on the purely secular level: scientific, technical, professional, cultural, political, national and international. For this reason, collaboration between believers and non-believers sometimes seems difficult, but it is precisely in the secular field that they can and must meet and that laymen can most authentically be witnesses and apostles.
I believe that I can state positively that any negligence in the apostolic fulfilment of the human mission today entails the gravest dangers. For it is in this field, to a large extent, that the future of humanity is at stake.
Source
Joseph Cardijn, The earthly mission of man and humanity, in Laymen into Action, YCW, Melbourne, 1964, 175p.