The question put before John the Baptist, “Who are you?” is one of the great questions of life. We may struggle to answer honestly or fully, “Who am I?” It’s easy to reply at a certain level by telling people what we do for a living, “I am an engineer,” or perhaps, “I am retired.” However, going deeper than our job description to who we are in our innermost selves is a much more difficult task. It can be said that our answer to that deeper question changes as we move through life. How we answer it at this present moment in our lives is not how we would have answered it earlier in our lives nor how we will answer it in the future.
For people of faith, the answer to that question is inextricably linked to our relationship with Jesus, because that relationship touches us at our core being. Saint Paul is the great example of that truth: If he was asked, “Who are you?” he probably would answer in the words of his letter to the Galatians, “I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me.” His identity had become strongly connected to the identity of Christ. When John the Baptist was asked, “Who are you?” in today’s gospel passage, he identified himself as “the voice of one that cries out in the desert, ‘Make straight the way of the LORD.’” His identity was formed by his relationship with Jesus. He is the voice who gives witness to the Word that became flesh. Our own baptismal calling is to keep on growing into Christ so that our personal identity is more and more formed by our relationship with Him. +
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