On such a solemn occasion as the installation of Cardinal Brislin as the Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Johannesburg, we remind ourselves of the other duties and responsibilities of religious and lay leaders in the church and in society.
Bishops, priests and the religious have a sacred duty to teach, encourage and inspire lay people in their apostolic activity that derives from their baptism into the mystical body of Christ (Vat. II, Lay people, no. 3). Lay people have been endowed with a variety of gifts. They are in their own right, God’s good stewards. Trained lay people become prominent evangelisers especially in the face of the diminishing vocations to the priesthood and to religious.
Arising from their spirit as followers of Christ, lay people have a duty and responsibility to be witnesses to Christ. They are to allow Christ’s message to permeate their families, their communities and their places of work. They are to promote, and intensify virtues that affect social behavior, namely honesty, courtesy, moral integrity, sincerity, fairness and justice.
The role of the church leaders vis-à-vis the apostolate of lay people has become an urgent mission that responds to the prevailing needs of the present time. The preaching and teaching of lay leaders should be so powerful like that of St Paul so that those who see and hear them might allow their lives to be inspired by Christ’s teaching.
The second major challenge facing society is the moral and religious duty for persons to face each other as persons. This challenge is to be brought to the fore in season and out of season by religious leaders. It is critical to remind ourselves and our communities that all persons bear the image and likeness of God. Every person is of an “unsurpassable value”, of “incomparable value.” Pope John Paul maintains that this reality is “confirmed by the very fact of incarnation” (John Paul, Evangelium Vitae, no. 2).
The inestimable value of human life in our communities is threatened by gangsterism, human trafficking, femicide, violence, drugs and abject poverty. Poverty diminishes human dignity.
Third. It is poverty that compels people to cross borders illegally. It is poverty and unemployment that drive people to steal copper, to destroy infrastructure, to commit robbery. It is sheer human greed that entrenches poverty and prevents material progress.
Human creativity and work are to be encouraged and promoted as the necessary condition for human progress and human happiness. The absence of work is the unhappy companion of poverty. Work is the antithesis of poverty. Work is key to human progress. Work promotes man’s dignity. It makes living possible. Work is at the heart of human worth. Pope John Paul II in his encyclical letter on Work, writes that work is a “good thing for man’s humanity and that work makes life more human” (Laborem Exercens, no. 93).
Church leaders are to promote and support every effort to create work made by the private sector, by leaders of both local and national government. In job creation is a moral imperative.
In the long run it brings back sanity, decency, joy and a sense of personal responsibility. Work is a response to men’s and women’s response to their universal calling.
Fourth. Religious leaders cannot ignore the fragmentation of our church communities, the stubborn racial divisions in our society. These divisions do not play themselves out in the open. They have conveniently gone underground. These divisions, at times seen between haves and the have not, are a veritable future threat to peace, stability and human progress. Repairing the rifts that are in church communities is the duty of church leaders and lay leaders.
The divisions which we do not challenge stand in opposition to the paramount value of unity preached by the Gospel. The claim that we are members of the body of Christ rings so silly and empty. St Paul writes: God has formed the body together, giving all the more honour to the least members so that there is no bodily rupture and members are mutually concerned about one another” (1 Cor. 12:24)
Lip-service to the value of unity, to our common belonging to the body of Christ, can only show our lamentable human frailty. The standards of Christianity are high: “love your neighbor as yourselves.” “Lay down your life for your brother and sister.”
When you do these things to the least of my brothers and sisters, you do them to me.
And so we pray with St Paul for our conversion, especially as leaders, that the scales on our eyes may fall (Acts 9. 18). How we wish to be told: “Go and wash your face in the Pool of Siloam” (Jn. 9.7).
+Buti Tlhagale o.m.i.
25/01/25
St Benedict’s College, Bedforview
