Second Sunday of Ordinary Time - January 18, 2026

 Today is the first day of Ordinary time, and now we change into our green vestments. This name, “Ordinary,” in this usage, does not mean “regular” time, or worse, it does not mean“ho-hum” time. “Ordinary” comes from the fact that the Sundays are numbered in sequence, or “ordered.” We call the counting numbers “ordinal” numbers, because they are in order, and this is where the name derives from, ordinary time. Last Sunday the Christmas season came to an end when we celebrated the feast of the Baptism of the Lord. Each year, the Sunday after Epiphany is saved for this feast, and the very next day, on Monday, we begin Ordinary time.

Technically, there is no “1st Sunday of Ordinary time. The Mondays in the Liturgical calendar are named after the Sunday they follow. Back when I was in school, they explained it this way, that the 1st Sunday of ordinary time was "perpetually usurped” by the Baptism of the Lord. This explains why we call last Monday the first Monday of Ordinary time. So, however we explain it, here we are, on the 2nd Sunday of O. T.

 There are 33 or 34 Sundays in ordinary time, depending on the number of Sundays in a given year. The Church uses this “Ordinary Time,” this “ordered time,” to meditate on the public ministry of Jesus. We use this time to tell the many stories of the ministry of Jesus, how he began to call his disciples to follow him, and how he began to spread the Gospel message in the towns and villages, while healing the sick as he preaches.

In our Gospel today, St. John the Evangelist tells the story of the very beginning of Jesus’s public life, as Jesus approaches the river Jordan, marking the beginning of his ministry. John the Baptist, on seeing Jesus approach, cries out, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!”

In order to help us understand what John the Baptist is saying here, we will recall some events in the history of Israel that happened several centuries early. First of all, we will remember that God tested Abraham, by commanding him to take his son Isaac, the son of his old age, the son of the promise; God commanded Abraham to take Isaac up a mountain and offer him to God in sacrifice. Abraham’s faith was so completely firm in trusting in God, that without hesitation, he took his son to sacrifice him. Abraham even tied the wood for the sacrificial fire onto Isaacs’s back, and had him carry it up the mountain, much in the same way that Jesus carried his wooden cross up the mountain of Calvary. Abraham carried some burning embers for the fire in a metal container, and he carried his knife in orderr to make the sacrifice of his son. As they climbed, Isaac asked Abraham, “Father, we have the wood, and we have the fire, but where is the Lamb for the sacrifice?” Abraham replied to the boy, “God himself will supply the Lamb.” Scholars who have commented on this passage say that it took two thousand years for Isaac’s question to be answered: it was answered by John the Baptist, when he sees Jesus approaching and he cries out, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!”

The next event we will recall is the Passover of the Lord, when the children of Israel were still in Egypt, and the Lord brought ten plagues upon Pharaoh for being so stubborn, refusing to let the people go. Nine of the plagues have already come, and now the tenth and final plague will be the angel of death who will go throughout the land at night, taking the life of the firstborn of every family and the firstborn of all their animals. But in order for the children of Israel to be spared, the Lord orders each family of his people to choose a one year old lamb without blemish, and slay it for their meal. But before they prepare it, they are to take the blood of this lamb and apply it to the lintel and doorpost of each of their homes, and then the Angel of Death will “Pass-Over” these homes and spare those firstborn of Israel. The Jewish people celebrated this event of Passover every year. Jesus himself celebrated this event of the Passover with the meal in the upper room with his disciples the night before he died. The Father, like Abraham, takes his own precious Son up the mountain as a sacrifice for our sins.

“Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.” We will notice that the priest quotes this Scripture Passage at every Mass, just before we  come up for communion, to remind us of the power of Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary. And we respond to this with humility, “Lord, I am not worthy.”

John the Baptist had these two events clearly in his mind when he pointed to Jesus and said these words. Furthermore, every single person  who was there that day, every person of the Jewish faith would have instantly recalled these two events as well. They all must have taken a second look at Jesus when John called out the words, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!”

Interestingly, St. John the Evangelist does not tell the story of the baptism of Jesus in his Gospel like Matthew, Mark, and Luke do. But he does include John the Baptist bearing witness to the fact that the Spirit descended on Jesus, and in this way he confirms Jesus's identity as the Son of God, the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. St. John focuses on the Baptist as the ultimate prophet who  reveals Jesus's divine nature, and emphasizing the Spirit's descent and permanence on Jesus to show He is the Messiah, who is anointed not with sacred oil, but instead is anointed with the Holy Spirit.

As we enter into this “Ordinary Time,” this ordered time, we have the opportunity to meditate on the public ministry of our Lord as we read from the Gospels about his teaching and healing. The true Lamb of God is revealed to us in these stories. This is the meaning of the third Luminous Mystery of the Rosary, “the proclamation of the kingdom.” John the Baptist is the herald who cries out in the desert, “prepare the way for the coming of the Lord.”

These readings of ordinary time are given to us so that we might draw closer to the Lord ourselves, so that we can hear the miracles, so that we can hear his teaching, and take them into our hearts in a new way, a fresh way. We might imagine that we are among those of the crowd, seeing and hearing these things for the very first time, so in that sense, they are no longer “ordinary,” but instead, marvelous, wondrous words and deeds that move us to put our faith in Jesus.

And so that we might hear in a new way, a fresh way, the words of the Baptist at each Mass, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”