Homily for the Sunday Mass of January 18: To contemplate Jesus is to love life

Sunday January 18 2026
2rd Sunday of the Year – Year A

Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

1^st reading: Isaiah 49, 3.5-6
Psalm: 39 (40), 2abc.4ab, 7-8a, 8b-9, 10cd.11cd
2^rd reading: 1 Corinthians 1, 1-3
Gospel: John 1, 29-34

"Here is the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" — "God will surely find the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." (Gen 22:7-8). This is the ancient dialogue of Abraham with his son Isaac that we hear every year on Easter night.

"Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world."John the Baptist said, pointing to Jesus.

The first reading presented us with an excerpt from what is known as the Second Servant Song. In the second part of the Book of Isaiah, four poems evoke this figure of the servant: You are my servant, IsraelAnd in these poems, we gradually perceive this announcement of the One who will be the Lamb: Like a lamb led to the slaughter, he does not open his mouth (Isaiah 53:7). The lamb is the Passover lamb. It is the lamb offered as a sacrifice for the Passover festival, which celebrates the Exodus from Egypt, the liberation of the people of Israel. The lamb and the sacrifice of the lamb are given by God to the people of Israel to commemorate this fundamental event, the Exodus from Egypt…

Jesus is given as the lamb. He will no longer lead us out of Egypt, but out of the power of sin and death, out of the slavery of sin and death that holds us captive. Jesus is given as the lamb. By pointing to him, John reveals that, in Jesus, God fulfills all his promises. He is the Son of God, he is the Lamb of God. He is the one who was promised, he, Jesus, and no one else.

Peter will exclaim in one of the speeches that we have in the Acts of the Apostles: « In no one else is there salvation, for under heaven no other name is given to mankind by which we can be saved. (Acts 4:12). And Jesus himself affirms in the Gospel according to Saint John, in the discourse after the Last Supper: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (Jn 14:6). We are custodians of this knowledge, custodians of this treasure, for the world. If it has been revealed to us by pure grace that Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth, born of the Virgin Mary on one day of time, died on the Cross on another day of time, and rose again on the third day, if it has been revealed to us that he is the only Savior, it is not only for us:

It is so that, like John the Baptist, we may bear witness to it through our lives, but also at certain times, through our words.

This is so that our lives may demonstrate that it is indeed He, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

It is so that our words may help our contemporaries to discover, in Jesus, the one who comes to save us from sin and death and who comes to make the beauty of life shine forth before our eyes.

How is it that, in our technologically advanced societies, we have so much trouble loving life?

How is it that we have so much trouble protecting life in its most fragile form, that is, at the very beginning, when human life protected in the mother's womb is entirely dependent on love, or at the other end of life, when the dependent elderly person can only live if they are surrounded by caring and attentive love?

How is it that in our societies we have so much trouble loving life in its most fragile form, when it is sometimes most wounded in disabled people?

By contemplating Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, we learn to love life.

One day, a sister exclaimed to Thérèse in the infirmary, "How sad life is!" and Thérèse reacted sharply, saying, "Life is not sad! On the contrary, it is very joyful. If you were to say, 'Exile is sad,' I would understand you. It is a mistake to call life what must end. Only heavenly things, what must never die, should be given this true name; and, in that sense, life is not sad, but joyful, very joyful!" (words to Sister Marie de la Trinité, June 1897)

Thérèse does not confuse life with the conditions of our exile on earth. She contemplates life first and foremost in the homeland of Heaven, in that “beautiful Heaven” toward which we journey. She contemplates life first and foremost in union with God who comes to give us this life: "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." said the Lord (Jn 10:10).

We are witnesses to the beauty of the life that God gives, and even of this human life in exile that the Word made flesh, Jesus, comes to share with us.

Last Sunday, in the Baptism of the Lord, we contemplated the Lord who, receiving the baptism of John, came to assume the death of the sinner and to lead the people of sinners, guiding them, through his Passion and his Cross, to the glory of his resurrection. Today, through the readings for this Sunday, the Church invites us to welcome the Lamb of God and to follow the Lamb. Since he is the one who takes away the sin of the world, let us help him by giving him our sins.

Since he came to take them away — and the verb means to take by lifting, truly to take away from us, to take away from us the weight of our sins — let us dare to give them to him.

And the means that the Lord has offered us, who are baptized, is to come to the priest in the sacrament of penance and reconciliation to give our sins to Jesus, and to abandon them to Jesus as we resume the course of our lives in a new way of life (Cf. Rom 6:4), on a path that the Lord opens up for us anew, at every moment.

And for those who are not baptized, it is in baptism that they will be able to give all their sins to Jesus, and welcome the Lamb of God into their lives.

We are witnesses to all of this. May we be given the grace to see in Jesus the only Savior and may we be given the grace to love him, to serve him, to imitate him and to follow him.

Amen.