Pope: 'holiness means living the Gospel in everyday life'

Holiness is the vocation of every baptised person, Pope John Paul said in his general audience yesterday. Among the 9,000 strong crowd were members of the Focolare movement, in Rome for their annual meeting, with their foundress, Chiara Lubich. The Pope said: "Vatican II reminded us that holiness is the vocation of every baptized person. In fact, only a Christian community shining with holiness can efficaciously fulfil the mission entrusted to it by Christ, that is, to spread the Gospel to the far ends of the earth." "The universal character of the Church's vocation to holiness is a truth that represents one of the pillars of the conciliar constitution 'Lumen Gentium'. Two general aspects should be underlined here. Above all the fact that the Church is intimately holy and is called to live and to manifest that holiness in every one of its members. In the second place, the expression 'holiness of people', makes us think of ordinariness, that is of the need for the baptized to know how to live the Gospel coherently in every day life: in the family, in one's work, in every relation and occupation." He concluded: "It is precisely in the ordinary that one must live the extraordinary."