2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2020
Isaiah 49:3, 5-6; 1Cor 1: 1-3; John 1:29-34
I can’t help feeling that Holy Mother Church needs to get her liturgical act together at this time of year. By now, you must be sick of me talking about the three aspects of the Epiphany—the visit of the Wise Men, the Baptism of the Lord, and the marriage feast at Cana—but it is an issue on which the Church doesn’t seem to know whether to stick or twist.
In the Divine Office, there are constant references to the three elements, but where the Holy Mass is concerned there is no mention. After a lapse of centuries, the Feast of the Baptism has been restored, but without reference to its relation to Epiphany, whereas the marriage feast crops up only one year out of three—and this is not such a year—but as the Gospel of a Sunday in Ordinary Time , with no hint of a link. And yet, there is what might be termed an “Epiphany quality” about each of the Gospels of the three year cycle on this Sunday, with Years A and B giving us passages from St John in which the Baptist “shows forth” the Lord as the Lamb of God, to complement St. John’s account of the marriage feast in Year C. It is almost as if the liturgists want to restore the three parts of the Epiphany, but can’t quite make up their minds to do it. Am I the only person to be confused by this?
Anyway, let’s look at what we have today. John the Baptist sees Our Lord coming towards him, and points to Him as the Lamb of God, before bearing fairly lengthy witness to Him. Jesus’ role as the Lamb of God is an important element in the Fourth Evangelist’s writings. Scholars seem to disagree about its exact origins, but it seems to combine a reference to the paschal lamb, slain at Passover to rescue the Israelites from slavery, with the Suffering Servant of Deutero-Isaiah, led like a lamb to the slaughter.
Then in the Apocalypse, John (if he is the author) depicts the Lamb as the central figure in heaven, the object of adoration—and therefore as God—and also as the bridegroom of the Church in its perfection.
All of this comes together for us in the Mass, at the moment of communion, when the priest holds up the consecrated Host and proclaims “Behold the Lamb of God. Behold Him who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those who are called to the supper of the Lamb.”
What are the implications of this? The sacred Host is the person whom John the Baptist pointed out. That Host is the “one who existed” before the Baptist: therefore, this is God, because it is only as God that Jesus existed before him. Indeed, the Baptist goes on, effectively, to affirm that this is the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, on whom he himself saw the Spirit descend like a dove after the Father’s voice had attested to Him.
That person is also the true paschal lamb, whose blood was shed to rescue the Israelites from slavery, and is the Suffering Servant foretold by the prophet. He is, as John the Baptist declares, the one who takes away the sins of the world. This is the person who is before us under the appearances of bread and wine, whom we are about to receive, to absorb into our bodies, to possess in such a way that He becomes part of us.
There is the further point of our being called to the supper of the Lamb. There are two meanings both concealed and expressed there. We are sharing in the Last Supper, that sacrificial meal in which the Lord first gave Himself to His disciples, that meal which reached completion in His death and resurrection. We are also anticipating the marriage supper, about which we read in the Apocalypse, when the Lamb of God is united definitively to His bride, the Church, and we share in the Messianic banquet foretold by Isaiah and foreshadowed in the miraculous feedings about which we hear in the Gospels.
These few sentences spoken before communion are overwhelming in their implications. They arise from the words of John the Baptist and the writings of John the Evangelist, and they link, implicitly at least, with the Epiphany, the showing forth of God the Son.
