The present volume comprises a revised version of Balthasar’s 1948 essay “Der Laie und der Ordensstand” (The Laity and the Religious State) along with a number of shorter texts on the laity and lay consecration. It thus provides a helpful introduction to one of his central concerns: the theology of the consecrated life, particularly in the context of the secular institutes. It is by living out the evangelical counsels at the heart of the world, Balthasar believed, that these institutes embody in paradigmatic form both the mission of the laity and the theologically central lay dimension of the Church as a whole.