Needless to say, I was stumped. I'll just go straight out and say it. What the brontosaurus does that mean?! Well, that's what ran through my head colourfully as fast as brontosauri ran, if they could run. How does one be Christian and not feel like a real Christian? What is a real Christian? So, it turns out, that what the question actually meant, according to the facilitator was, having you ever committed such a grave sin that you've felt that you aren't a Christian anymore.
Well, now that he put it that way....well, it almost all made sense. Almost. I guess, I've personally never doubted my identity as a 'real' Christian. If anyone needed proof that I was a real Christian, I had my baptismal and confirmation certificates to prove it. Signed and seal with the Holy Ghost! It doesn't get any better than that. However, if you asked me if I ever felt like a 'good' Christian. Well, the answer is not as clear, maybe, but I probably am not most of the time. I might be religious, but I'm far from Holy.
I find it very strange that protestants can have this idea of not feeling like a real Christian. This idea that sin tears you away from the promises of baptismal, the indelible seal of the Holy Ghost, forever supernaturally marked upon your soul by the very Almighty God who created you. Though, some of them downplay the importance of baptism, some never receive it, even though it's in the bible. So, what makes a real Christian?
Simply put, what makes us Christian is really that indelible mark of baptism. It is the gift of grace that from God that allows to be imbued with his spirit and to given the chance to discover him, and to have that faith. It’s a gift that God free chooses to give and that we choose to accept. No one chooses God, do decides to take Jesus as his personal saviour and lord. It is Christ who chooses you and calls you. And, when we answer that call through our baptism that we become Christians and are admitted into that great family in heaven who will never abandon us in life or death.
I suppose, however, that there is this supposed ideal of being Christian that one has live up to. This ideal generalises that Christians should be virtuous, charitable, kind, patient, and loving. To be a Bl. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, or Bl. Pope John Paul II to everyone. Essentially, while the modern world condemns Christians, they expect them to be really good human beings, and well, they aren't wrong for having such high expectations. After all, the call to be Christian is certainly more than a mere figure of identity, or a paper cert acknowledging the occurrence of some ritual, no, it's far more. It is a call to love and serve God with complete obedience and humility to His divine will. You have to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, take in the stranger, visit the sick and imprisoned (Matt 25:31-46). And that's only one lesson, there are ton from everything on loving your enemies (Matt 5:44), to forgive and keep forgiving(Matt 18:22), to giving up everything and eschewing worldly pleasures (Matt 19:21), to getting insulted and hated for God(Mark 13:13/John 15:18). It is essentially to be completely Christ-like in life and is certainly not an easy one. (Go on, think of the person you hate the most and say I am going to love him, and tell me you think it's easy.)
Hence, because of these great people (noticed how I used two saints as examples), there certainly is a high standard to live up to! After all, our faith manifests in the work that we do and we see that in how St James remonstrates us in his letter that 'What shall it profit...if a man say he hath faith, but hath not works? Shall faith save him?' (James 2:14). Thus, there certainly is an ideal for a Christian to live up to. And, the saints are great examples of that ideal, after all, they strove to love God with all their heart and to live their lives with heroic virtue, and so, represent a semblance of that ideality. However, there is one person in the whole of creation who completely fulfills that ideality, and to us is the greatest example and the greatest saint of all and that is Our Lady and our heavenly mother, Mary. Through her obedience to God, we have attained the Saviour of the World.
Yet, while we strive for ideality, there is always the reality of the situation, we are fallen people, and thus we fall into sin, time and time again. Even Our Lady could not do it alone, She stayed pure and immaculate because God filled Her up to the brim with His grace, and so He too gives us his grace to avoid sin when we ask for it. In fact, more than just his grace, he has given us the sacrament of confession when we still fall, so that we may return to him, and to admit and take responsibility of our sins and through that, we receive his forgiveness and absolution.
And that is the reality of being Christian. We all fall because and we need the humility to accept that we fall, because we are human. We are not perfect, though we must strive to be good, we still will fall. And when we sin, we need to ask God to forgive us, and He will, hence the sacramental confession.
St Peter Julian Eymard says, 'He loves, He hopes, He waits. If He came down on our altars on certain days only, some sinner, on being moved to repentance, might have to look for Him, and not finding Him, might have to wait. Our Lord prefers to wait Himself for the sinner for years rather than keep him waiting one instant.' Like the Father who spent all his days just waiting and watching for the return of His prodigal son, so he waits for us! and how comforting to hear those words,
'God the Father, through the death and ressurexion of His Son, has reconciled the world to Himself and sent the Holy Spirit for the forgiveness of sins. Through the ministry of the Church, may he give you pardon and peace. And, I absolve you from your sins, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.'
O what great comfort! For I know, truly, that through the words of my confessor, and the authority that Christ gave to him when He commissioned the apostles, that 'if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained (Jn 20:23), I am forgiven of all my sins!
Perhaps, this is why if one is understands the faith sufficiently, one will remember that it is true baptism that one is a Christian. A Christian falls, but stands up again, repents, seeks the forgiveness of the Lord, and does penance. There is no sin too big that God cannot forgive, and there is never any sin that God does not want to forgive, only as long as we ask for it.
'However awkward confession may be, it is the decisive place where one experiences anew the freshness of the Gospel, where one is reborn. There we also learn to blow away our pangs of conscience, just as a child blows a falling autumn leaf. There we find the happiness of God, the dawn of perfect joy.' Br Roger Schutz
'After a fall, stand up again right away! Do not leave sin in your heart for even a moment!' - St John Vianney
'Love Jesus! Have no fear! Even if you had committed all the sins in the world, Jesus repeats these words to you: Your many sins are forgiven, because you have loved much.' - St Padre Pio
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