Pope Leo XIV has centered the catechesis of this Wednesday’s General Audience on the Constitution Lumen gentium —following the line of documents from the Second Vatican Council— in which he emphasized the identity of the Church as the “people of God” with a common priestly and prophetic mission. Before the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square, the Pontiff recalled that all the baptized actively participate in the life and mission of the Church, called to bear witness to the faith and to contribute to its transmission, in communion with the Magisterium and under the action of the Holy Spirit.
We leave below the complete catechesis of Leo XIV:
Dear brothers and sisters, good morning and welcome!
Today I would like to pause once again on the second chapter of the conciliar Constitution Lumen gentium (LG), dedicated to the Church as the people of God.
The messianic people (LG, 9) receives from Christ participation in the priestly, prophetic, and royal work through which his salvific mission is carried out. The conciliar Fathers teach that the Lord Jesus has instituted through the new and eternal Covenant a kingdom of priests, constituting his disciples as a “royal priesthood” (1Pt 2,9; cf. 1Pt 2,5; Ap 1,6). This common priesthood of the faithful is given with Baptism, which enables us to worship God in spirit and truth and to “confess before men the faith received from God through the Church” (LG, 11). Furthermore, through the sacrament of Confirmation, all the baptized “are more closely bound to the Church, enriched with a special strength of the Holy Spirit, and thereby more strictly obliged to spread and defend the faith, as true witnesses of Christ, by word together with works” (ibid.). This consecration is at the root of the common mission that unites ordained ministers and lay faithful.
In this regard, Pope Francis observed: “Looking at the People of God means remembering that we all enter the Church as laity. The first sacrament, the one that seals our identity forever and of which we should always be proud, is that of baptism. Through it and with the anointing of the Holy Spirit, (the faithful) “are consecrated as a spiritual house and holy priesthood” (LG 10), so we all form the Holy People faithful to God” (Letter to the President of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, March 19, 2016).
The exercise of the royal priesthood takes place in many ways, all aimed at our sanctification, especially by participating in the offering of the Eucharist. Through prayer, asceticism, and active charity, they bear witness to a life renewed by the grace of God (cf. LG, 10). As the Council summarizes, “the sacred character and organically structured nature of the priestly community is actualized through the sacraments and virtues” (LG, 11).
The conciliar fathers also teach that the holy people of God participates in Christ’s prophetic mission as well (cf. LG, 12). In this context, it introduces the important theme of the sense of faith and the consensus of the faithful. The Doctrinal Commission of the Council specified that this sensus fidei “is like a faculty of the whole Church, thanks to which in its faith it recognizes the transmitted revelation, distinguishing between true and false in matters of faith, and at the same time penetrates it more deeply and applies it more fully in life” (cf. Acta Synodalia, III/1, 199). The sense of faith therefore belongs to each faithful not individually, but as members of the people of God as a whole.
Lumen gentium focuses attention on this latter aspect and relates it to the infallibility of the Church, to which the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff belongs, in serving it. “The whole body of the faithful, who have the anointing of the Holy One (cf. 1 Jn 2,20 and 27), cannot err when it believes, and this peculiar prerogative of theirs is manifested through the supernatural sense of faith of the whole people when, from the Bishops to the last lay faithful, it gives its universal consent in matters of faith and morals” (LG, 12). The Church, therefore, as a communion of the faithful that obviously includes the pastors, cannot err in faith: the organ of this property of hers, founded on the anointing of the Holy Spirit, is the supernatural sense of faith of the whole people of God, which is manifested in the consensus of the faithful. From this unity, which the ecclesial Magisterium guards, it follows that every baptized person is an active subject of evangelization, called to give coherent witness to Christ according to the prophetic gift that the Lord infuses into his entire Church.
The Holy Spirit, who comes to us from the Risen Jesus, in fact dispenses “among the faithful of every condition, distributing to each one as he wills (1 Co 12,11) his gifts, with which he makes them apt and ready to exercise the various works and duties that are useful for the renewal and greater building up of the Church” (LG, 12). A peculiar demonstration of such charismatic vitality is offered by consecrated life, which continually springs forth and flourishes by the work of grace. Ecclesial associative forms are also a luminous example of the variety and fruitfulness of spiritual fruits for the building up of the People of God.
Dear ones, let us awaken in ourselves the awareness and gratitude for having received the gift of being part of the people of God; and also the responsibility that this entails.