For the first time, CLM Resources offers the complete text of this previously unpublished lecture.

In his address, Figari stressed the need to avoid confusions in relation to the mission of laypeople in the life of the Church. "In our time -he said-, Catholic identity is suffering in many a corrosion tending to undermine it and replace it with a vague selection of usually self chosen Christian values and beliefs." The lack of identity, which could also be called "lack of conscience", has weakened the laity, he said.

Recalling the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, as well as other documents of the Magisterium, he also reflected about the identity of the lay people and clergy in the Church. In relation to this, he said that on many occasions there is confusion in the role of the laity and the clergy, with the danger of a "clericalization" of the lay faithful, as well as the "danger of laicizing the clergy"

"The rich communion ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council, the perspective of the People of God, as well as the Pauline image of the Church as the Body of Christ" have encouraged a deepening "in the Mystery of the Church, as well as in the identity of lay faithful and cleric faithful, all called to be real Christifideles", he stressed.

The founder of several ecclesial associations also reflected about the mission of lay faithful, specially the mission of catholic families. Regarding this, he stressed that "marriage is a vocation to holiness". "Our world cries for the witness of catholic couples and families", he said. Christian life was also a theme addressed by L.F. Figari in his conference. "Life in Christian terms is not a latent life, some type of vegetative existence, but rather it is a qualitatively intense life, an authentic experience of fullness".

He also reflected about the presence of Blessed Mary, whom he called "paradigmatic Christifidelis laica". "We can see -he affirmed- that in the union of life in Mary there is no divorce nor opposition of any kind between announcing and testifying to the Word and serving in the human solidarity and human promotion". "We should open ourselves to the reality Mary shows us as paradigm of Christian life, of layperson"

At the end of his conference, he stressed that the lay faithful "is called to holiness". "That teleological horizon should permeate the whole Christian life of the layperson". "The world needs witnesses. People that do not fall in the trap of functional agnosticism, putting a parenthesis to their Christian life while acting different roles in the world. We cannot be absent. We must be conscious of our identity as lay faithful and act with coherence in the different responsibilities we have in life".