Lay Ministry

Lay Ministry Sunday

Bishop Burbidge is initiating Lay Ministry Sunday, August 30, in the Diocese of Raleigh to celebrate God’s call to all the baptized to use their gifts in service to others and to the Church. Parishes are invited to take advantage of this Sunday to acknowledge both the sanctity of God’s call and the generous response of lay ministers. Parishes are asked to include Bishop Burbidge’s letter to the lay faithful in their bulletins on Lay Ministry Sunday.

Bishop Burbidge's Letter

The Call to Holiness

"Life according to the Spirit, whose fruit is holiness (cf. Rom 6:22; Gal 5:22), stirs up every baptized person and requires each to follow and imitate Jesus Christ, in embracing the beatitudes, in listening and mediating on the Word of God, in conscious and active participation in the liturgical and sacramental life of the Church, in personal prayer, in family or in community, in the hunger and thirst for justice, in the practice of the commandment of love in all circumstances of life and service to the brethren, especially the least, the poor and the suffering." (Christifideles Laici, no. 16)

The Call to Community

"From the communion that Christians experience in Christ there immediately flows the communion which they experience with one another: all are branches of a single vine, namely, Christ." (Christifideles Laici, no. 18)

The Call to Mission and Ministry

"The ministries which exist and are at work at this time in the Church are all, even in their variety of forms, a participation in Jesus Christ's own ministry as the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep, the humble servant who gives himself without reserve for the salvation of all." (Christifideles Laici, no. 21)

The Call to Christian Maturity

"The gospel image of the vine and the branches reveals to us another fundamental aspect of the lay faithful's life and mission: the call to growth and a continual process of maturation, of always bearing much fruit." (Christifideles Laici, no. 57).

Prayer