BECOMING A CHRISTIAN  

First of all, it seems important to me that the Church does not regard becoming a Christian as the result of a course of instruction or even of a training process. She regards it as a sacrament. This means that no one becomes a Christian by his own unaided power. No one can make himself a Christian. It is not man’s business or within his competence to upgrade himself, as it were, into a great-souled person and finally into a Christian. On the contrary, the process of becoming a Christian begins only when a person sloughs off any illusion of autonomy and self-sufficiency; when he acknowledges that man does not create himself and cannot bring himself to fulfillment but must open himself and allow himself to be led to his true self.To be a Christian, then, means first and foremost that we acknowledge our own insufficiency and allow him—the Other who is God—to act upon us.—Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)

(As posted on Ignatius press facebook)
From his book “Dogma and Preaching”, available on our site here:www.ignatius.com/Products/DP2-H/dogma-and-preaching-2nd-ed.aspx?src=ipfb

Image: St. Francis Xavier baptizing. Photograph by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. See more of his images at www.flickr.com/photos/paullew/