"Who Are You Lord?"

Sunday Reflection: "Who Are You Lord?"

 

Identity is the mark of the Advent Gospels.  John the Baptist wanted his disciples to know the true identity of the One was to come.  Now the pharisees send their men to find out the identity of John the Baptist:  "Art Thou the Christ?"  Identity is the first issue in each soul's quest for the eternal.  The ageless questions of saints echoes in each of our hearts and its response is the only satisfying meditation that we can offer for our day and time.

Who art Thou Lord?  Is Jesus one of the many or the One and Only?  Is Jesus the Son of God and Son of David?  Can He be the way, the truth and the life that we are seeking? Or do we look for another.  Seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened to you; ask and it shall be granted to you.  As one part of our world seeks to eliminate the very mentioning of His Name; another part seeks to know Him as Savior.  If He is the Truth, then He must be pre-announced by God through the prophetic tradition.

For this reason the hypocritical Jews come to one of their own.  John the Baptist comes from priestly stock and his actions are stirring up the populace.  Could this son of a priestly father be the Messiah?

John answers them in a straight forward manner:  "I am not the Christ."  If not the Christ, then are you a prophet like Elijah or Jeremiah or Isaiah?  Again the response is clear and concise:  "I am not."  In frustration they come right out with the issue:  "What have you to say about yourself?"  Now the crucial central line of the passage:  "I am a voice crying out in the wilderness make straight the path of the Lord."

 

John's identity, as well as yours and mine, is determined by our relationship to the person of Jesus Christ.

Hence John becomes the voice of an angel announcing the coming of the Savior.  Each of us is in the same Mystical Body of our Lord Jesus Christ.  We must discover our role and position in that Mystical Body.  Recall how the Little Flower went about discovering her role and position.  She studied the Word of God until she read in I Cor. XIII the passage concerning the highest of all gifts:  divine love.  "That's it," she thought, "I am the heart of the Mystical Body!"

Satisfaction comes when we discover who we are in relationship to Who He is.  In all things the person of  God must be our first concern.  We were created to "glorify God" and that means that we cannot fulfill our lives until we come to glorify our Creator, our Savior and our Sanctifier.  WE are dependent upon the God Who is, Who was and Who forever shall be.  Meditate upon this fact:  God is all and we are nothing.

Yet God desires to share Himself totally with "useless" me.  In this humility we will come to understand the depths of our sin and the greatness of His grace.  Shall we be the voice of one crying out in the wilderness; shall we be His eyes in a blind world or shall we be His heart calling all back Himself in a love affair eternal.

 

Prepare well for a good and complete confession of your sins and you will have prepared well for Christmas, 2015.

In the hearts of Jesus, Mary and Joseph,

Fr. Richard Voigt