18 January 2026 – Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
Is 49:3, 5–6; 1 Cor 1:1–3; Jn 1:29–34
Homily
The Gospels for the Sundays in Ordinary Time of the liturgical year are taken each year from a different evangelist: Matthew for Year A, Mark for Year B, and Luke for Year C. However, on this second Sunday, which follows the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, we read each year a part of John the Baptist's testimony about Jesus according to the Gospel of John. John does not recount Jesus' baptism by John the Baptist, which marks the beginning of Jesus' public ministry in the other Gospels, but dwells on John's testimony.
This testimony is not addressed to anyone in particular and therefore applies to all men and women of all times: ‘John bore witness...’. Previously, John had already said to those who questioned him about the meaning of his baptism: ‘There is one among those who follow me (that is, among my disciples) who is greater than I...’. So on the day he comes, he recognizes him and says, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world’. The title ‘Lamb of God’ obviously refers to the lamb eaten each year during the Passover celebration and, beyond this memorial, to the lamb whose blood had marked the doorposts of the Jews in Egypt during the night of the Exodus and saved their firstborn sons. The expression also referred to the lamb that was hunted each year in the desert, symbolically charged by the priest with all the sins of the people.
But what does John the Baptist mean by the expression ‘the sin of the world’? He does not say ‘the sins of the world’, but ‘the sin of the world’. What sin is he referring to? ‘Tèn hamartían tou kósmou’ really means ‘the sin of the world’ and, in a way, ‘the sin of the world par excellence’. First of all, what world is he referring to? Obviously, the world just mentioned in the Prologue to the Gospel of John: "He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him.”
The ‘sin of the world’ is not this or that transgression, nor even the sum total of transgressions. Rather, it is the world of men as a whole, insofar as it does not receive Christ's message and does not allow itself to be transformed by him. The ‘sin of the world’ is the fact that our world, the one in which we live, is not structured according to the Gospel. The sin of the world is that the poor and the little ones are crushed, that so many men and women suffer from hunger, that so many people are driven from their homes and countries by war, that the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer, that so many sick people are dying for lack of medicine while astronomical sums are spent on developing instruments of death. The sin of the world is the existence of wars, abortion and the death penalty. It is the violation of all the rights of individuals and peoples. The sin of the world is also the guilty silence and inaction in the face of all these injustices and crimes.
It is from this sin that the Lamb of God, recognized by John, came to deliver the world. And yet, after two thousand years, the world is still in its sin. We are all in this world, but it is possible for each and every one of us not to be of this world. How? By receiving the Son of God, by accepting his message, by allowing ourselves to be transformed by him: ‘To all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.’
John the Baptist recognized the One who came to free the world from sin because his heart was pure. He saw the Holy Spirit descend upon Jesus' head, and shortly afterwards his own head was cut off. Let us ask God to give us the clarity to recognize both the sin of the world (in us and around us) and to recognize the One who delivers us from it, even when this clarity can be dangerous and fraught with consequences.
Armand Veilleux