OMELIE / Omelie EN

18 gen 2026

18/01/2026 - 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A

18/01/2026 - 2nd Sunday in O. T. - Year A

Reading 1 IS 49:3,5-6 * Psalm 39 * Reading 2 1COR 1:1-3 * Gospel JN 1:29-34

“It is too little, the Lord says, for you to be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and restore the survivors of Israel.

I will make you a light to the nations...” Thus speaks the prophet Isaiah to the people. He wants to help them realise that they are not the only people loved by God, but the people which, though small and weak, has received from him a divine mission for all other peoples. The most obvious consequence would be that the members of the people of Israel, beginning with their leaders, obey all the words received from God and, with great humility, cultivate love for other peoples: in fact, he wants his mercy to reach everyone. Otherwise, this people will not be able to fulfil the mission entrusted to it. For this reason, it is necessary that all members cultivate a desire to truly convert. To convert means to accept God's desires, his plans, his will, and ultimately his mercy.

Unfortunately, Jesus himself, seeing the rejection he received from the leaders of the people and the chief priests of the temple, had to say that the mission entrusted to it would have to be given to others. We know that these others are his Church, his disciples who live in intimacy with him. Over the twenty centuries that have passed since then, these words have been repeated often: they should have aroused in Christians, especially in the members responsible for the Churches, a desire for continual conversion, a widespread desire for holiness, which has not always happened.

Today, in communion with many Christian churches and communities throughout the world, we begin an octave of prayer to obtain from the Father the grace to repent. We all have a constant need to start afresh, beginning with the will that Jesus manifested to us in his words. We all have the task of loving everyone. No one is privileged, but we are all charged with showing and giving to all peoples, to the members of all religions, to all the Christian denominations which we know we are separated from, and even to those who deny the existence of God, the richness of faithfulness and mercy, and the holiness that the Father continues to invest on us through the sacrifice of Jesus.

It is him that John the Precursor speaks to us about today: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” He offers his own life, his own blood, like the lamb offered to God on the altar of the sacrifice. And, thanks to this love, he obtains for us the forgiveness of sins. No one else in the world takes away sins from the hearts and lives of men. We will always experience contrition, because sin exists, and it exists in our will, in our limbs, in our thoughts, and not only in those of others, not only in the lives of those who do not yet believe.

Those who do not believe will come to faith when they notice the wonder of our unity. They will come to faith in God, our Father, when they see that we love one another, despite the faults and sins that dominate and destroy us. Our mission is great towards everyone, towards the whole world.

And John reports that he was told again: “On whomever you see the Spirit come down and remain, he is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.” Jesus is not only the one who offers himself for our purification, but also for our sanctification. He is the one who immerses us in the Holy Spirit, that is, in the life of communion of our Trinitarian God. By remaining immersed in his life, we absorb it, we become imbued with it, so much so that we change the world in which we live. When we are imbued with the love of the Father for the Son and of the Son for the Father, even without realising it, we will spread it wherever we are. We will give all the people we meet a taste of the goodness, beauty, faithfulness, wisdom and patience of our God.

This mission is not reserved for a few. Saint Paul, beginning his letter to the Christians of Corinth, reveals to us that they “have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be holy, with all those everywhere who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours”. “Called to be holy” is our identity. When we forget this, we become a scandal not only for our brothers and sisters in faith, but also for the whole world. Let us therefore repeat this to one another, as the Apostle does today together with his secretary Sosthenes, who writes the letter. You are holy! You invoke the name of our Lord Jesus Christ: let us help one another to clearly show the holiness of our Father!