What Is a Christian?

Gospel Reflection for January 26, 2025 - Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21

Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a narration of the things that have been accomplished among us;

According as they have delivered them unto us, who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word:

It seemed good to me also, having diligently attained to all things from the beginning, to write to thee in order, most excellent Theophilus,

That thou mayest know the verity of those words in which thou hast been instructed.

And Jesus returned in the power of the spirit, into Galilee, and the fame of him went out through the whole country.

And he taught in their synagogues, and was magnified by all.

And he came to Nazareth, where he was brought up: and he went into the synagogue, according to his custom, on the sabbath day; and he rose up to read.

And the book of Isaias the prophet was delivered unto him. And as he unfolded the book, he found the place where it was written:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. Wherefore he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, he hath sent me to heal the contrite of heart,

To preach deliverance to the captives, and sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of reward.

And when he had folded the book, he restored it to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.

And he began to say to them: This day is fulfilled this scripture in your ears. (Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21 DRA)

What does it mean to be a Christian? Is it just a kind of political affiliation, the acceptance of a certain ideology of moral values in common with others? Or is it more like being in a club, where the members have regular meetings, hear interesting speeches and reenact inherited rituals and customs to prove their membership? Or maybe it’s just something personal and private, a way to feel hopeful about life, deal with personal problems through prayer and find inspiration in reading Scripture, interpreting it however the Spirit seems to lead?

All of these have some kernel of truth to them, but they also fall far short of what it really means to be a Christian. From all of these perspectives, Christianity is just one more religion, not fundamentally unique or different from other religions, merely a social construct for the passing on of cultural values and the instilling of ethical rules. Accordingly, Jesus is no more than a good teacher or rabbi, as those who were not His disciples tended to call Him in the Gospels – not the Lord, the Law of God incarnate and the Son of the Father in the Blessed Trinity, the Judge of all mankind and the Head of the Church which is His Mystical Body. No, just an exemplary human leader on the level of Moses, Buddha, Lao Tzu or Confucius.

If that’s the case, Jesus is as lost to history as these other figures, whose teachings have survived but who have otherwise passed into memory.

But this is not the Jesus of the Gospels.

To be Christian means, as St. Paul said in the Epistle, to be incorporated into Christ – not simply in a metaphorical sense, whatever that might mean (an image that couldn’t be applied to any mere man), but literally to be made a member of Him, taking on not only His sinless and perfect humanity but also, through the Sacraments, being made “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pt 1:4) hypostatically united to it and sanctifying everything He experienced and did in His earthly life. The life of the Trinity courses down from Christ the Head to each member of His Body like lifeblood. To be Christian means to follow the same ladder of Jacob which Christ descended to come down to us from Heaven, but in reverse:

We are joined to Him who for our sake was incarnate and who deified our nature, who died and rose again. Why then do we not observe the same order as He, but begin where He left off and reach the end where He began? It is because He descended in order that we might ascend. It is by the same path that it was His task to descend, that it is ours to ascend. As in the case of a ladder, that which was His last step as he descended is for us the first step as we ascend. It could not be otherwise because of the very nature of things. (Nicholas Cabasilas)

As Dr. David Fagerberg explains,

Christ’s kenosis [self-emptying] consisted of putting away glory, and our kenosis consists of putting away the old Adam. Christ emptied himself in order to take up [prokope] humanity, and we lay down sinful humanity in order to take up divine life. Christ veiled the glory that was rightfully his, and we turn away from self-glorification.

While the Son of God, “being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man. He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross”, (Phil 2:6-8) then ascended back to glory by His Resurrection and Ascension, we descend in humility by putting away our sins, accepting our sufferings with patience and offering them to the Father as a pure sacrifice and a sharing in the Cross of Christ. We then climb up the ladder descended by Christ and are carried “in the power of the Spirit” up to the pinnacle of divinization, by which we are made shares in God’s divine nature through incorporation into the Body of Christ. “The only Son of God is born a man of the Virgin Mary, to achieve in his own person the elevation [prokope] of man to God in the fullness of time.” (St. Hilary)

This is the true meaning and uniqueness of Christianity. It is also the true meaning of the Sequela Christi, the discipleship or imitation of Christ: to become truly united with Him in all things, thus remaking our soul, whose mirror-image of God is tarnished by sin, back into His reflective likeness:

Sequela Christi does not mean: imitating the man Jesus. This type of attempt would necessarily fail—it would be an anachronism. The Sequela of Christ has a much higher goal: to be assimilated into Christ, that is to attain union with God. . . . Man is not satisfied with solutions beneath the level of divinization. . . . The Sequela of Christ is not a question of morality, but a “mysteric” theme—an ensemble of divine action and our response. (Joseph Ratzinger)

But how do we do this? We are enabled to be divinized by the infusing of sanctifying grace, the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity and the gifts and fruits of the Holy Ghost given at Baptism, which are then further strengthened at Confirmation. Nevertheless, without our free cooperation in this gift of divine life, it remains inert in us, a muted invitation which we discard in favor of the glamours of the world. Ultimately, we are divinized through liturgy, both in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, whenever we receive Christ in the Eucharist not only by sacramental communion, which for many remains only a physical reception, but by spiritual unification in ours hearts, and in the liturgy of daily life, the mundane asceticism and mysticism by which we consecrate the world to Christ and act as His ambassador to others, the icon of His divine and divinizing love on Earth.

In this life of liturgy, we are conformed more perfectly to Him; thus is not only our life but our death made efficacious, so that, when we pass from this fallen world, we may join the saints of the Church Triumphant in the glory of the Beatific Vision. This is the certainty of hope given by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost: not an earthly human hope but a hope which is already proven by the Ascension of Christ and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who even now lives in the fullness which is our deepest longing. If the liturgy, whether sacramental or mundane, loses this quality of descent and ascent, of divine kenosis and human elevation, of the Sequela Christi, becoming merely social or private, practical or sentimental, customary or customizable, it loses its God-given purpose for the divinization of man, the very motive of our creation and His Incarnation:

Liturgy is an ensemble of divine action and our response. If that ensemble disintegrates, then liturgy becomes ritual, asceticism becomes morality, Christianity becomes just another religion, mysticism becomes spiritual enthusiasm, theology becomes philosophy of religion, eschatology becomes a species of human hope, providence becomes luck, and the temple becomes a meeting hall for the Jesus Club. (Dr. Fagerberg)