The Acts of the Apostles says that it was at Antioch that the followers of Jesus were first called “Christians”.

I once heard a challenging homily where the priest asked: “If you were put on trial and accused of being a Christian, would they find enough evidence to convict you?” An interesting question, without a simple answer. How exactly would we be judged? What might constitute hard evidence that we are Christians?

I grew up in a Roman Catholic culture that had certain agreed-upon criteria for what made you “a practicing Catholic”, namely: Do you go to church regularly? Are you keeping the Sixth Commandment? Is your married life in order? More recently, both Roman Catholics and other denominations have become fond of judging your Christian standing by your stance on certain moral issues like abortion or gay marriage.

What about Jesus, what did he teach in terms of what makes for a practicing Christian?

There is no simple answer. Jesus, the Gospels, and the rest of the New Testament are complex. For example, when teaching how we will ultimately be judged, Jesus doesn’t mention attending church, keeping the sixth commandment, or how we stand on abortion or gay marriage. He has only these criteria: Did you feed the hungry? Give drink to the thirsty? Welcome the refugee? Visit the sick? Visit prisoners?

What would the verdict be if these were the central criteria by which a jury judges us?

Then there is the Sermon on the Mount. Counselling us as to what it means to be his disciple, Jesus asks: Do you love those who hate you? Bless those who curse you? Do good to those who harm you? Forgive those who have hurt you? Forgive the one who kills you? Do you love beyond your innate instincts? Have you ever really turned the other cheek? Do you radiate God’s compassion which goes out equally to everyone, good and bad alike?

Again, how would our discipleship of Jesus stand up to judgment vis-à-vis these criteria?

However, there are other critical criteria about what does or does not make us practicing followers of Jesus.

One such criterion has to do with community. The scriptures tell us that God is love and whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in that person. The word used here for love is “agape”, and in this context it might also be rendered as “shared existence”. God is shared existence, and everyone who shares his or her existence in community lives in God.

If that is true, and it is, then whenever we live inside of family and community, we are a “practicing Christian”. Of course, this may not be simplistically equated with explicit ecclesial community, with going to church, but it does hint strongly at belonging to a graced community. So, does going to church make me a practicing Christian?

Finally, there is another critical criterion. The earthly Jesus left us only one ritual, the Eucharist. On the night before he died, he instituted the Eucharist and told us to continue to celebrate it until he returns. For 2000 years we have been faithful to that invitation, we have kept the Eucharist going. According to the theologian Ronald Knox, this constitutes “our one great act of fidelity”, in that we haven’t always been faithful in other ways. Sometimes we haven’t turned the other cheek, haven’t loved our enemies, haven’t fed the hungry, and haven’t welcomed the refugee, but we have been faithful to Jesus in one critically important way: we have kept celebrating the Eucharist. We have been practicing Christians in at least one important way.

So, facing a jury set to judge whether we are a Christians or not, could the most telling evidence of all be that we regularly participate in the Eucharist? Could this single action convict us as being a practicing Christian?

Among all these potential criteria, which one makes for a practicing Christian?

Perhaps the more fruitful path toward an answer is not to weigh these criteria against each other to try to discern which is most important in determining what makes for a practicing Christian. Perhaps it is more fruitful to focus on the verb “practicing”.

To practice something doesn’t imply that you have mastered it, that you are proficient at it, not alone that you are perfect at it. It only means that you are working at it, trying to master the skill.

Given human nature, all of us have certain shortcomings in terms of measuring up to the demands of Christian discipleship. Like someone struggling to master a musical instrument or an athletic skill, we are all still practicing. Thus, to the extent that we are trying to get better at feeding the hungry, at welcoming the stranger, at loving our enemy, at radiating God’s wide compassion, at sharing our existence in community, and at being habitually at the table of the Eucharist, we are in fact practicing Christians.