Sts. Basil the Great and Gregory + Year B '12

Who are you?  This, I think, is the second most important question that one can be asked (The first in importance is Who do you say Jesus is?) The testimony of John the Baptist consists in his answering this question both negatively and positively:
I am neither the Christ nor the Prophet nor Elijah. The Baptist does not think more of himself than he should. While he may have been able to mislead his hearers into thinking more of him than they should, he would not mislead himself. I think most of you think, not too much of yourselves but too little. Listen to what St. Paul says to the Galatians: So you are no longer a slave (Gal 4:7):
Not To The Law: But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law to ransom those under the law (Gal 4:5).
Not To Sin: But now that you have been freed from sin and have become slaves of God (Rom 6:22).
Not To The Devil and not Even To Death: through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who through fear of death had been subject to slavery all their life. (Heb 2:14-15).
The positive answer to who are you? Also is not self-deprecating . . .
I am the voice of one crying out in the desert, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’. He is not afraid to recognize that the Prophet Isaiah spoke of him. Who he was is intimately connected to what he does. And so the question for you remains: Who are you? Let’s go back to how St. Paul answered that: but (you are) a son, and if a son then also an heir, through God (Gal 4:7). Know your identity in Christ! Know who you are not and know who you are. It’s out of your understanding of your identity that your thoughts, words and actions flow.

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