What does it mean to be Christian?

What does it mean to be Christian? – May 1, 2019

There is no easy answer to that question, and those who think the answer is easy, really don’t understand the Christian faith.

Christianity before I found the Church was a shallow and vapid expression of the Christian faith, and seemed focused on emotionalism more so than the truth. What feels good or feels right is indeed the truth in this cacophony of error. I spent most of my life as a protestant, and while everyone was teaching what THEY thought scriptures were saying, no one taught how a Christian should live, what it actually meant to be Christian.

As I dove into history, and focused on early Church history, there are certain elements and qualities in the Church, qualities and expectations in the life of a Christian, that just isn’t found today in most of Christendom. The Church, and its entire sacramental life and being within, should point to the Eucharist.

A Christian is a part of the body of Christ. One becomes a part of that body through Baptism. One participates in communion with that body by the Eucharist. One remains a part of the body by holding to the same beliefs, as taught and passed down (catholicity of the Dogmatic fabric of faith), and remaining in communion with one another, just as the three persons of the Godhead are in perfect communion and unity with one another.

As we were created human beings, with both body and spirit, we are to live our lives in recognition that we live and exist in both body and spirit. As such, those who live by mental ascent alone do nothing for the body. They continue to live in their passions, and do nothing to defeat the disease, of which sin is the symptom.

If the Church is the Hospital, the Priests her Doctors, and theology a therapeutic science for the soul, to be Christian is to work ourselves within the divine-human institution of the Church to the healing of mind, body, and soul, affecting a restoration of relationship with God. To be a Christian is to obediently follow the prescription of the Church, just as we follow a doctors orders to the healing of our bodies, for Christ is the Great Physician and those prescriptions are his. Ours is not a faith of passivity, but activity in love and compassion. We are the light to lighten the gentiles, because we are the body of Christ, and together we incarnate Christ in this world.