Homily for the 2nd Sunday of Ordinary Time. Jan. 18, 2026. The Gospel of John 1:29-34. Theme: Behold the Lamb of God!
If there’s a title for Jesus that we Catholics hear the most and yet probably understand the least, I would say that it’s the one proclaimed in today’s Gospel: Lamb of God. We are so familiar with saying it and hearing it at every Mass that I think it may have become just one more of those “Catholic things” that we no longer stop to really think about because they are so familiar to us. It’s kind of like the way so many of us look upon a crucifix. We are so used to it being on the walls of our churches or homes that we no longer really see it for what it is: the bloody corpse of a tortured man. But the thought of Jesus as “Lamb of God” should arouse within us the same sentiments of pity, love, and gratitude as that of the cross. Why? Because they are really one and the same thing just expressed in two different ways.
To grasp this connection we need to take a brief look at the religious worship of Judaism, the spiritual womb out of which Christianity was born. The religion of the Old Testament was significantly associated with animal sacrifices offered in atonement for sin. Lambs, whose white wool coats became symbols of purity and holiness, had a preeminent role in these sacrificial Jewish liturgies. And the most important of them was that of Passover which we retell in our Liturgy every Easter. God commanded that the blood of a sacrificed lamb was to be smeared on the doorposts of Hebrew houses in Egypt granting them protection from death. Then, after the family ate the flesh of this sacrificed lamb in a special ritual meal, they took off on the Exodus journey.
However, these ritual sacrifices were insufficient to actually remove sin and actually wipe away their guilt. Why? Because both the Jewish priest making the sacrifice and the people offering the lamb as a proxy for themselves, were sinful human beings with no power whatsoever to bring about atonement for sin. A better way was needed and God himself provided this better way. You see, the only way that true and effective atonement could be made was if the one making the sacrifice was himself utterly free of sin and motivated by pure and perfect love. In other words, the human race stood in need of a perfect and all-holy human being who would thus be able to offer up a perfect and all-holy sacrifice on behalf of all! And this put us in quite a quandary because no one among us stood before God free from sin!
And so, to make this seemingly impossible condition possible, God himself became man. This was the only way it could be done. With the consent of God the Father and by the power of the Holy Spirit acting upon Mary, God the Son freely gave up the glory of his heavenly realm in order to truly become one of us. And this is why the Gospel of John tells us that, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone whoever believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” (Jn 3:16) Finally, true atonement for sin became possible! The sacrifice of Jesus, the Lamb of God, accomplished what millions of animal sacrifices could never ever do, because it had divine love and divine power behind it. And this sacrifice of Jesus as the victim-lamb had actually been foretold by the prophet Isaiah, 700 years before it took place. He said that the Messiah would be like a lamb brought silently to the slaughter, to take the sins of the people upon himself and wash them away through his blood.
The Passover ritual of the Old Testament was a foretelling of the Great Passover of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. His Precious Blood of Atonement was first poured out on Good Friday and then has been ritually re-enacted ever since in every Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Just before Holy Communion, the priest like St. John the Baptist, points out to us the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He directs us to turn our eyes towards the Lord, whose heart is full of compassion and pity for us in our weakness. This is why we respond with the plea for healing and forgiveness. Then we acclaim Jesus as the Lamb of God three times, and in the first two of these petitions ask him to “have mercy on us.”
But why do we change the last invocation, to “grant us peace”? Because the Lamb of God brings us serenity of heart since we know we are immensely loved. He bestows upon us serenity of mind because he has brought our sins with him to the cross. And when that Lamb rose triumphantly from the grave our sins remained behind, dead, buried and gone. And so we know that by grace through faith we have been freed from the guilt of our sins and this fills our hearts with a peace that the world cannot give.
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