OMELIE / Omelie EN

15 gen 2023

15/01/2023 – 2nd Sunday in O. T. – year A

15/01/2023 – 2^nd 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

Today’s liturgy is telling us to continue to look at Jesus and the mirroring of His light on John the Baptist’ face. He is talking to his disciples and the crowds: he cannot help but talking about the One everyone is waiting for and he has seen and known, the One he feels loved by and he knows the whole world needs. He is giving us His identity through different images: He is «the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world», the man on whom «the Spirit come down like a dove», the one «who will baptize with the Holy Spirit», the One who is called «the Son of God»! All these expressions and definitions given to represent Jesus would deserve a detailed discussion. The Jewish people certainly were understanding them well, because they are biblical images which are a reminder of many events in the history of the people, facts which are full of God’s presence and His promise of salvation.

The «Lamb of God» is the Passover one, the blood of which had saved the people in Egypt from the killer who was coming to kill all the first-born. It is also the Lamb which every year was loaded with the sins of the whole people and then pushed out in the desert taking them with it, where it was to die.

It is the Lamb which was sacrificed on the altar of the temple to ask for forgiveness for a single person’s sins. It is always its death which saves and cleanses, it is with its death that the Lamb becomes precious for everyone. By calling Jesus «Lamb of God» John tells us that He will be sacrificed, and that, with His death, He will become very important to us.

By saying that on Him has «the Spirit come down like a dove», the creation of the world is referred to, when the Spirit was floating above the waters to bring order to the initial chaos. Jesus, by exiting the water of the river Jordan where He had been baptised, starts a world just like God had intended it to be. It will be a new world, where God is not avoided by men anymore, but looked for, loved, obeyed with love and trust.

By saying that He is «the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit» John is telling us that Jesus is fulfilling Ezekiel’s prophecies: this prophet is promising from God a new life, a new heart, brought exactly by God’s Spirit who is placed inside us. The Baptism is bringing cleanse, change in life: Jesus cleanses our inside and places in it the same Spirit which moves God’s heart! Jesus’s work in men’s favour is completely new, because is making us part of the divine life.

By saying, at the end, that Jesus is «the Son of God» John is making us think of the second Psalm, which says that to the Son of God is given to rule over all peoples; He will build the kingdom of God, announced to David and foretold by Daniel. Jesus then is the king, a king who does what God has promised He would do in the world: He will love men as the shepherd loves his sheep and takes care of them, above all the sick and the wounded ones, and he will gather them from all places where they ended up being lost. The expression Son of God is allowing us to think as well of the fact that by looking at Him we will be able to see God Himself, because every son is part of the same nature as the father.

We welcome John’s testimonial, and with him we keep our eyes focused on Jesus to enjoy Him, but above all to run to meet Him and follow Him with all our heart. This is also the desire of the apostle and the prophet, who today are helping us to put our trust in the one who the Father has sent us.

And our life will be already a realisation of the prayer of the Church for the unity of all believers in Jesus!