“Knowing Who You Are (and Aren’t)” by Colleen O’Sullivan

“Knowing Who You Are (and Aren’t)” by Colleen O’Sullivan

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

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

Lord, open the ears of my heart that I may hear who you are calling me to be.

Study

The Preaching of St. John the Baptist, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 

1566, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, 

Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

We don’t actually know a great deal about John the Baptist.  Did Zechariah ever tell his son of the angel’s surprise announcement of his impending birth?  Did his mother Elizabeth ever mention the visit from her young cousin Mary and how John leaped in her womb at being in the presence of Jesus in Mary’s womb?  Did either parent tell him the story about how he was given the name John or how his father’s doubts caused the angel to strike him mute until John came into the world?

How did John come to be such an ascetic, choosing camel’s hair over softer fabric for his garments and subsisting on locusts and wild honey? 

No wonder people were curious about him.  Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian, tells us in his Jewish Antiquities that huge crowds followed John to hear him preach.  As time passed, the religious authorities of the day, and, in the end, even Herod himself begin to feel threatened by the popularity of this itinerant preacher.  “Who are you?” they wanted to know.  John’s preliminary answers were 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 said, pressing the issue of his identity.

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

Action

There is much to be said for knowing who we are, and it might be worthwhile to spend some time reflecting on what words we imagine God would use to describe us and what unique role God has for us in this life.  It’s equally important to know who we are not, although on any given day we seem prone to forget and to assume the role of lord of our own little universes.