What is so confusing about Christianity is that it cannot just be studied to be understood. Certainly there is a great tradition of scholarship associated with this faith of ours but it is so much more than that.

Christianity is a way of life. As we experience it, we come to understand it.

What is it that compelled Mother Teresa into the slums of Calcutta or Albert Schweitzer to spend most of his life in the jungle of Lambarene or you into a sanctuary on a Sunday morning? It certainly isn’t just a book of nice little sayings. It isn’t listening to a litany of moralistic proverbs.

It is a way of life that can only be understood from the inside. Only from the inside because the paradox of Christian living seems too absurd to be true.

In giving we receive.

In losing we win.

In dying we rise to new life.

How often people will say to me that they don’t think they are much of a Christian because they don’t know the Bible or they still have to read the words of the creed or they stumble over the ancient liturgy.

The mark of a Christian is not how much you understand but how you follow.