Who Are You? A Matter of Identity

January 15 2016

This past Sunday's Gospel reading challenges us as Christians. Who are we? Elsewhere, Christ tells us that we are to be salt and light in the world, yet the basic challenge is relatively easy to see: we are to be whom God created us to be. Seems easy enough but that begs a lot of questions, including how are we to know who God wants us to be?

The classic answer to that question is that we can know what God wants of us through reflective prayer, frequenting the sacraments (especially confession), and studying Scripture. But truly finding God's purpose for us requires us to go even deeper, if that is possible. Our purpose is to be like Christ and live as such in the world. That is a fundamentally daunting task in a world that is increasingly secular and in some quarters violent to Christians. While being a Christianis becoming increasingly dangerous  this doesn't reduce the responsibility each Christian has to live the Gospel and be like Christ in a dark world. If the first generations of Christians went singing hymns to the Roman lions then Christians today can withstand abuses as well.

What does this mean in practice? Are we to hide away from the popular culture and write off fashionable cultural trends? Hardly. Christians have a duty to understand the culture, what is popular in the culture, and be knowledgeable about the passing things of the day because the role of every individual orthodox Christian is to be a subversive presence in the world. That is to be Christ-like. Jesus did not come to the world to reinforce power structures, destructive cultural practices, or to hide away from the world and those practices. Christ came to save souls and to institute a new order that would give humanity a fighting chance against the tide of darkness.

This is evident in how our Lord dined with tax collectors, the unclean masses, and his befriending of prostitutes. Christ let the Pharisees and Sadducees separate themselves from God and did not identify themselves with them, though there were individual Pharisees and Sadducees counted among his followers. His presence in the world sent shock waves wherever He went. Christ may have been a peace maker but He was also probably the largest disruptive force socially that the Roman-occupied Israel had seen in quite some time. If anything this fed into why He was crucified.

Some high profile Catholic commentators understand this. Bishop Barron is an obvious example, with his highly successful Youtube ministry. By merely understanding the culture and offering insight that from a Catholic perspective you will be a disruptive force. Most likely you won't be affected the way Christ was, nor will you disrupt society in a major way, but on an individual level you will show people a view they are not familiar with. This can be jarring, which is the point. Representing Christ in the world requires that people be shocked out of their comfort zones, of course done peacefully and respectfully. This may be the hardest part what I'm suggesting, as it is very easy to be tempted to slide into a self-righteousness that reeks of pride; to do so is not to be Christ-like in the least.

To be Christ-like means to be the version of us that God knows we are capable of becoming. This isn't an abstract idea in the least. It means, in short, to become a saint. While it's certainly not abstract it is not easy. This is why prayer and the sacraments are so essential to the life of every Catholic. Without the sacraments we are left to survive with our own strength, which can be precarious at best. Frequenting the sacraments is the best strategy to being true to both God and ourselves; through the faithful reception of the sacraments we find our best chances of becoming Christ in the world.