Who Are You?

Who Are You?

January 2, 2013

Memorial of Saints Basil the Great and Gregory Nazianzen, Bishops and Doctors of the Church

By Colleen O'Sullivan

Let what you heard from the beginning remain in you.  If what you heard from the beginning remains in you, then you will remain in the Son and in the Father.  And this is the promise that he made us:  eternal life.  (I John 2:24-25)

So (the priests and Levites) said to (John), “Who are you, so we can give an answer to those who sent us?  What do you have to say for yourself?”  He said:  “I am the voice of one crying out in the desert, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as Isaiah the prophet said.”  Some Pharisees were also sent.  They asked him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Christ or Elijah or the Prophet?”  John answered them, “I baptize with water; but there is one among you whom you do not recognize, the one who is coming after me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.”  This happened in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing. (John 1:21-28) 

Piety

May we be humble witnesses like John.  May something about our lives point others to the Truth. 

Study

No wonder people are curious about John.  Josephus, a first century Jewish historian, tells us in his Jewish Antiquities that huge crowds followed him to hear him preach.  As time goes by, the religious authorities of the day, and, in the end, even King Herod himself begin to feel threatened by the popularity of this itinerant preacher.  “Who are you?” they ask.  His preliminary answers are all in the negative.  I’m not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet.  Well, if you’re none of those, who in the world are you, out here baptizing people? they say, pressing the issue of his identity.

John quotes the prophet Isaiah and says he is sent to prepare the way of the Lord.  There is another to come, one so exalted, that even John, holy as he is, is not fit to be his slave or untie his sandal.

As I was reflecting on the question – Who are you? – I remembered my grandmother in her older years going around saying, “These may be the golden years, but they seem a bit tarnished.”  Maybe that’s true, but it seems equally true that as we mature in years, it becomes easier to answer that question – Who are you?  Life gets better in the sense that the angst of earlier days is gone.  We no longer face decisions about whether or not to go to college, what to major in, what type of career or vocation to pursue.  We’re no longer trying to figure out who we are and how we fit in.  If we have children, they grow up and pursue lives of their own.  We’re not so concerned with proving ourselves to others.

As we grow older, we realize that we really don’t have to prove ourselves to anyone; our worth comes from being much loved children of God.   We also discover that life isn’t a big competition to see who does it best.  We’re all pilgrims on the journey alongside other pilgrims.  We’re all trying to get to the same destination and we need each other’s help along the way.  In our first reading today, we are told not to let go of what we have heard from the beginning.  Life is more about being faithful to the Gospel than about being better than anyone else at anything.  And, as we see in today’s Gospel reading, life is also about witnessing humbly as John does.  Something about how we live should point to Christ and should invite others to join us in worshiping him. 

Action

Wherever you are in life’s journey, how would you answer the question “Who are you?”