Work as “a Mass”: Reflections on the Laity’s Participation in the Munus Sacerdotale in the …
Work as “a Mass”: Reflections on the Laity’s Participation in the Munus Sacerdotale in the Writings of the Founder of Opus Dei
, by Cruz González-Ayesta
This study has its origin in some words taken from the oral preaching of St. Josemaría. Commenting on a phrase from a traditional prayer to St. Joseph, et operas innocentia tuis sanctis altaris deservire, he said that we want “to serve our Lord not only at the altar, but in the whole world, which is an altar for us. All of the works of man are done as if on an altar, and each of you, in that union of contemplative souls which is your day, in some way says ‘his Mass,’ which lasts twenty-four hours in expectation of the Mass to follow, which will last another twenty-four hours, and so on until the end of our life.”1 I think this reflection contains great theological riches, even though it is formulated, as so often happens with St. Josemaría’s texts, not in theological terms but in what we could call “pastoral” language.
The theological teaching that underlies these words, it seems to me, is the lay faithful’s participation in the “triple office” of Christ. Therefore I will begin this study with a brief consideration of the Magisterium’s teaching in this regard. Then I will consider some key texts from St. Josemaría. The founder of Opus Dei refers in several places to the participation by the lay faithful in the triple function of Christ,2but he often synthesized his teaching in a succinct expression: to have “a priestly soul” and “a lay mentality.” Grasping the meaning of this expression will require a brief look at the term “work” and its theological import in the founder of Opus Dei’s writings.
1. Participation by the lay faithful in the munus sacerdotale3
The place of the tria munera (three offices) of Christ, and particularly the faithful’s participation in them, in the New Testament and in the Tradition handed down by the Fathers and in the liturgy is a question open to theological discussion. Aurelio Fernandez, for example, argues in an extensive monograph4 that the tria munerashould be seen as simply a useful theory for systematizing the mission of the Church and that of Christ, but not as an inflexible schema exclusive of others (for example that of the double power of sacred ministry and jurisdiction): “Nevertheless, as I will try to show in this book, neither the Fathers nor the theologians unanimously agree that Christ’s mission is specified in three powers or functions, and therefore neither do they refer to that triple function as participated in by the ecclesiastical ministry, and even less by the other baptized. And above all, the Church’s early theology is foreign to the theory of the triple munus as it is considered today, that is to say, as an element basic to Christology and, in general, to the conception of the Church, which develops through the fulfillment of these three offices.”5
This thesis is opposed to that formulated thirty years earlier by Paul Dabin.6 This author defends the continual presence of the teaching of the tria munera, both in the teaching of the Fathers and in theology from the medieval period right up to the twentieth century: “The triple office is a sublime reality. Participation in it by the faithful is neither a usurpation nor something imaginary. It is a Catholic truth taught by the Fathers, theologians, the Catechism of the Council of Trent, and universally reflected in the various liturgies.”7 Since resolving this discussion far exceeds the limits of this work, I have decided to set aside the consideration of the biblical and liturgical foundations and focus on the teaching set forth in the texts of the Second Vatican Council. It is generally recognized that there this teaching is amply used to describe the mission of the Church and its faithful, whether laity or ordained ministers. The Second Vatican Council explicitly stressed for the first time8 the participation of the faithful in the triple office of Christ: priestly, prophetic and royal. The Council’s teaching closely links this to the common priesthood of the baptized as well as to the carrying out of the vocation and mission of the laity in the Church.
This teaching of the Council, which I will describe briefly below, was preceded by a certain amount of theological discussion, especially in the French-speaking world. To go into the details of these discussions far exceeds the scope of this study. Nevertheless, a very brief consideration of the disputed questions can serve as a framework to introduce the teaching on the participation in the tria munera Christi. I will take as the main authors in this regard F. Mugnier, Yves Congar and Gérard Philips.9
These authors use a number of different texts from Scripture to explain the nature of the participation by all the faithful in Christ’s priesthood. Some of these texts are used by all of them, although their interpretation at times differs. I am referring particularly to three passages: 1 Pet 2:5 (“Like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”); Rom 12:1 (“I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship”); and Rev 5:9-10 (“Thou wast slain and by thy blood didst ransom men for God from every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and hast made them a kingdom and priests to our God.”)
Perhaps the key question in this discussion is the relation between the priestly, prophetic and royal offices, particularly in the non-ordained faithful. While Congar tends to consider them separately, Mugnier and Philips take the view that the priesthood in a certain manner includes the munus propheticum and the munus regale.
Congar thinks that the notion of priesthood should be considered within the category of sacrifice, although he admits that Catholic tradition has also viewed it from the perspective of mediation. His emphasis on sacrifice is based on the view that not every mediation is priestly. He suggests that the types of priesthood should be distinguished according to the types of sacrifice: thus there is a double sacrifice and a double priesthood in the faithful. On the one hand, interpreting the texts cited above, Conger refers to the offering by the faithful of spiritual victims that come from their life according to the Spirit. This sacrifice and priesthood (which he calls royal-spiritual) is linked to grace and to ordinary life. By union with Christ through grace, the Christian can offer his own life as a spiritual sacrifice in such a way that his very existence acquires a dimension of cult or worship: “Worship, the sacrifices of the faithful, and therefore the priesthood which corresponds to them, are essentially those of a life that is holy, religious, prayerful, consecrated, charitable, merciful, apostolic. This worship, these sacrifices, the priesthood that corresponds to them, is not carried out in a liturgical or sacramental way.”10
On the other hand, there is the consecration that the faithful receive for sacramental worship. This sacramental priesthood is divided in turn into two priesthoods which differ essentially and not just in degree. By the sacrament of Holy Orders some faithful are given the capacity to administer the sacraments and celebrate the liturgy (the hierarchical or ministerial priesthood), while in virtue of the baptismal character every Christian is given the ability to participate in the liturgical sacramental worship of the Church, in particular, the Eucharist (common or baptismal priesthood). Thus Congar separates the royal-spiritual priesthood from the baptismal priesthood. While by the first type of priesthood the faithful participate in the kingly office of Christ; through the baptismal priesthood they participate in the priestly office. Congar explains this division between royal-spiritual priesthood and sacramental priesthood through the Augustinian distinction between res and sacramentum. The royal-spiritual priesthood is in the order of res, that is to say of grace, while the sacramental priesthood is in the order of sacramentum, of the means to attain grace.11
Nevertheless, Congar also seems to hold that the exercise of the two priesthoods “unites” in some way when the faithful participates in the Eucharist: “The faithful offer themselves by carrying out a spiritual (moral) immolation of which they themselves are the priests at Mass, as both content and fruit. As content, because the Eucharist is the offering of the members with and in the head; but above all as fruit. . . . We have to bring to the Eucharist all the truth of our ordinary, daily life. . . . To put our whole life into the Mass, to include the Mass in our life, has always been the most practical truth preached by the Church to the faithful in the matter of Eucharistic participation. In this way, the spiritual-royal priesthood by which we offer ourselves as spiritual victims, is united to the baptismal priesthood, by which we liturgically offer the sacrifice of Christ. There is a kind of osmosis of one to the other, the presence of one in the other since. Being members of the liturgical assembly, we offer ourselves with Christ, fulfilling the act of interior spiritual priesthood in our baptismal priesthood.”12
In contrast to Congar, both Mugnier and Philips defend a unitary vision of the three offices of Christ and, consequently, of the lay faithful’s participation in them. As opposed to the division between priesthood in the order of life and the priesthood in the order of worship (spiritual-royal priesthood and baptismal respectively), both authors speak of a single priesthood in the faithful. Philips insists that the priesthood of the faithful is an ontological reality, a true participation in the priestly dignity of Christ which is realized in different ways …