Jan. 19, 2020 - 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
(Is 49:3, 5-6; 1Cor 1:1-3; Jn 1:29-34)
When we say the words of the “Agnus Dei” or Lamb of God, during Mass, we are directly quoting John the Baptist.
By calling Jesus the “Lamb of God,” John sums up his entire mission: he is to prepare the way for the One who will come, to actually take away our sins. John’s words about Jesus would have had a powerful impact on those who heard them because they would have called to mind the sacrifices of the Old Testament, particularly the Sacrifice of Passover. In the Passover, the blood of a lamb protected the faithful Israelites from the Angel of Death. Now John the Baptist calls Jesus the lamb of the New Passover, the one who will spare all of humanity from eternal separation from God. Jesus is the perfect, true sacrifice that all the old sacrifices had been pointing toward. He is truly the Lamb of God.
The offering of Isaac by Abraham was a pivotal event in salvation history for the Jews. Rather than requiring the sacrifice of Isaac, God sent an angel to Abraham to point out a ram, caught by his horns in a thicket, to offer instead. Isaac is a symbolic foreshadowing of Jesus who is the beloved Son of God, just as Isaac was the beloved son of Abraham. At the end of our passage from John’s Gospel, John the Baptist, after calling Jesus the Lamb of God, also identifies him as “the Son of God.”