Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Vigil
January 18, 2020
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
- This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us this Sunday.
- This Sunday we revisit the scene that we marked last week, celebrating the feast of Jesus’ Baptism. Last week we heard St. Matthew’s version, which focuses mainly on the facts of what happened. Today we hear St. John the Evangelist’s account, which concentrates more on the perspective of St. John the Baptist. And we see something surprising if not shocking. The Baptist says that that the whole reason for his mission, the point of his life, the purpose for which he was baptizing with water at the Jordan, was so that he would be able to point out the one who was coming after him who would baptize with the Holy Spirit. And when that long-awaited person came, the Baptist didn’t cry out, “Behold the Lord!,” “Behold the Messiah!,” “Look! The Son of God!,” “Here is the Savior, the King of Jews and King of Kings, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Light of the World, the Resurrection and the Life,” — or any of the other fitting titles that would have filled his listeners with awe at the incredible majesty of the One whose sandal strap John was saying he wasn’t worthy to untie. Instead he used an expression that was not majestic at all: “Behold the Lamb of God!”
- We have grown so accustomed to the phrase “Lamb of God” — which we use in the Gloria, sing or say three times in the prayer called the Lamb of God, and hear the priest say when, echoing the very words of John the Baptist, he holds Jesus in his elevated hands as tells us to behold him — that many of us no longer sense what the Jews would have felt when the Baptist referred to Jesus in this way. Imagine, however, that someone said to you, “Look! There is the pigeon of heaven! Or behold the squirrel of the Almighty! Or welcome the chihuahua of God!” Your reaction would be something similar to the first reaction of the Jews to Jesus when they heard the term lamb. Lambs aren’t high on our list of beloved and admired animals. They’re not noted for their strength, or looks. They’re not impressive like elephants or tigers, stallions, bulls or eagles.
- Jesus, however, identified with the humble attributes of the lamb. He identified with the lamb sacrificed by Abel that was pleasing to God; with the lamb that God provided for Abraham’s sacrifice so that Isaac wouldn’t die; with lambs whose blood was placed on the lintels of the Jews during the Passover; with the lambs that were offered each day to God in the Temple in atonement for sins. Jesus assimilated in himself the identity and sacrificial purpose of the Lamb in Jewish mentality to become precisely the acceptable sacrifice offered to the Lord to take away the sins not just of the Jews but of the whole world. Beholding Jesus as the Lamb of God, the Jews were invited to see something far greater at work than just a carpenter from Nazareth, but the fulfillment of all the sacrifices of the Old Covenant, the realization of the much-prophesied work of the long-awaited Messiah. They were challenged to see in him something far greater than met the eye. And through the Baptist’s words and work, God was calling all of them to relate to Jesus under this title, to allow him to take away their sins and, later, to eat him, just like the Jews needed to eat the Passover lamb to be freed from Pharaoh and become capable of the journey to the Promised Lamb.
- Jesus, however, didn’t stop the imagery and identification of himself as the Lamb with John the Baptist’s expression. He would later call himself the “Good Shepherd,” tell us we were the sheep of his flock, and before his Ascension would entrust to St. Peter and to all of us in the Church the care of that flock. At the Sea of Galilee after the Resurrection, he asked St. Peter three times, in response to his three fold denial on Good Friday, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” And when Peter replied that he did, Jesus commissioned him, “Feed my lambs. … Tend my sheep. … Feed my sheep.” If we, like Peter, love the Lord, then it will show by how we feed and protect others, both the grown up sheep and the small, young, vulnerable lambs. Jesus identifies the love we have for him with the love we give to his sheep and lambs.
- Next Wednesday, January 22, we will mark the 47th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision that, with its companion case Doe v. Bolton, made the abortion of Christ’s smallest lambs legal in our country. It’s a day of penance, prayer and fasting. The Jewish historian Josephus said that during the heyday of the Temple in Jerusalem, up to 256,000 lambs were killed in one year. Just imagine the amount of blood that would have rained down like a river in the temple from the massacre of so many animals. Then multiply that number several times over, and that’s the number of human beings that have been slaughtered legally every year in our country since Roe. And yet the killing goes on. We Catholics are supposed to do something about it. Jesus, the Lamb of God, told us that whatever we do or fail to do to the least of his brothers and sisters — and there’s no one smaller than those in the womb — we do to him, and that whoever receives a child in his name receives him. We need to behold the Lamb of God, behold Jesus, in each of the endangered lambs made in his image and likeness. We need to rise up to defend and protect them.
- In the first reading of Sunday’s Mass, Isaiah will tell us quite clearly that the Lord “formed me as his servant from the womb.” The prophet Jeremiah tells us that God called him from the womb and consecrated him as a prophet to the nations. The Lord has called us from the womb as well to be his servants and part of that service is to cherish, defend and protect those in the womb, made in his image and likeness. Just like a lamb isn’t a particularly impressive animal, so a little child growing in the womb might not stick out all that much. But we know that just as the carpenter at the Jordan was far more than met the eye, so we know that every child growing in the womb is someone special, someone loved by the Lord, someone called by the Lord, someone that the Lord has entrusted to our love and care. Let us ask the Lord Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, to take away from our midst the sin of abortion and the culture of waste and death that leads to it, to forgive us our own sins of omission and commission with regard to tending and feeding his lambs and sheep, to strengthen us with courage to work to transform not only our laws but our culture. We ask him to help us, who behold him under the appearances of bread and wine here at Mass to learn to behold his face in every unborn little brother and sister!
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