2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)
Isaiah 49:3,5-6 | Psalm 39(40):2,4,7-10 | 1 Corinthians 1:1-3 | John 1:29-34
Seeing Jesus coming towards him, John said, ‘Look, there is the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.’ (John 1:29)
St. John’s words should sound familiar, since every celebrant echoes those words as he elevates the Body of Christ:
Behold the Lamb of God, behold Him who takes away the sins of the world.
Many of us who received instruction in earlier times were told to bow our heads at this point, which still made no canonical sense under the words of the missal we grew up with:
This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
Perhaps there was something “lost in translation” from the pre-Vatican II rites, but if I were told by someone that “this is XYZ”, I’d be looking at XYZ to at least confirm that the speaker wasn’t mistaken. The new words makes the appropriate posture even clearer:
Behold! Look at me, the spotless Lamb who took on your sins and the sins of everyone else! Why are you looking down?
If we are unable even to look at our Saviour with love and affection, when He’s presented to us in the form of a clean white wafer, how much more difficult would it be for us to look at Him in the guise of “the least of these brothers of Mine” (Matthew 25:40),
the burdened servants of our daily needs,
the bedraggled poor who wander our streets?
Behold Christ, our Redeemer and Lord. Let us hide not our faces from Him. Let us look to Him always,
in our celebration of Holy Mass,
in the conduct of our daily lives,
in the faces of our brothers and sisters, especially the ones “beneath” us.
Amen.