The Christian - Disciple of Jesus Christ
"A Christian is a person to whom Jesus
Christ has confided other people"
Lacordaire
The Christian, challenged by Jesus
Christ
One day, along the way, Jesus confronted his disciples point-blank with the
question: “Who do you say that I am?” (Mt.16,15). To each generation of his
followers, the Lord addresses the same vital question. The response of
Christians today determines their identity and shapes the actions that follow
from that identity.
At a time when Christians are invited to bear evangelical witness before a world
that is less and less Christian, it is important to clarify the question of the
Master to his first disciples, a question that challenges all of us. For the
quality of our Christian practice depends, in reality, on our faith in Him: the
depth of our union with Him will be the most certain guarantee of the future of
the Church. Our Lord does not ask his own to be a majority in the world, but to
be the leaven in the mass, the salt of the earth, the light on the lamp stand.
What is often lacking among Christians who were baptized and confirmed in
childhood but who never ratified in adulthood the sacramental treasures latent
inside them, is the experience of a true encounter with Jesus Christ. They have
not discovered his face, his word, his teachings, nor formed an existential bond
with Him.
But Jesus Christ not only animates the personal life of a Christian – He is also
the One who commands us to bear his name and his Gospel to the heart of the
world. We must obey this order to go to the world, to put out into the deep. We
are not fully evangelized unless we, in turn, become evangelizers both on our
doorstep and far a field.
We do not possess Christianity as if it were our private property, we only
preserve it by letting it shine forth all around us. Oh, if only Christians –
who have received their Christianity as an inheritance – could once again become
aware of the immense spiritual distress of the world and go out toward it to
reveal, in words and deeds, that Jesus Christ bears in Himself the ultimate
secret of this human brotherhood which has still not succeeded in establishing
itself!