The Lamb of God

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time - "A:"

January 16th 2011

Deacon Kevin Reid

Church of the Immaculate Conception

Is 49.3, 5-6

Psalm 40

1st Corinthians 1.1-3

John 1.29-34

Behold the Lamb of God the one who takes away the SIN of the World.

My brothers and my sisters just before you line up today for Communion please if you would just for that moment as Father Stew says those words consider in your heart what it means to behold to truly treasure something. To realize that we are about to receive a gift that has no price other then our saying "Amen".

And then as you approach the altar you will be given the Grace to taste and see the same Lamb of God that John the Baptist saw some two thousand years ago.

Many years ago while attending Mass with my family the Pastor lifted up the host and said this is Jesus the Lamb of God and my Son Owen said in just as loud of a voice "Where's Jesus, I don't see him" of course he was looking for a character in a tunic with a beard and a shepherds staff, the Jesus from his childhood story books.

The question we should be asking ourselves is what Jesus do we hope to encounter today.

The God of Creation, of healing, the one who delivers the prisoners from Bondage, the sight to the Blind, who removes demons from our lives? Is this who we are hoping to come into Communion with?

We here at ICC have the luxury of a Perpetual Adoration Chapel, a place that you can go into any time of the day and just spend some quiet time with the Lamb of God there present in the Eucharist in peaceful and humble adoration.

We can find him there, always patiently waiting for us, to come to him and to lay our burdens at his feet. The same feet that were nailed to a cross for each of us, that was part of his vocation.

Good people his humble presence quiets the restless soul and gives hope to the hopeless.

He is at one time both the beginning and the end. He is judgement and mercy, life and death.

He is the sacrificial lamb of Abraham, the lamb of Moses who brought deliverance from Slavery. The lamb sacrificed on the Cross at Cavalry. And he is also the victorious lamb of the Apocalypse in his final victory over evil.

The Lamb who takes away the Sin of the WORLD.

John was speaking to his Disciples when he said this was the ONE, this was the long awaited Messiah, the one who came and died for each of us gathered here this morning in Community.

He is the promised new covenant, the source of life and the wellspring of the Father's mercy and of the Holy Spirit's unending guidance and Love.

My friends we are the honored guests at this Holy Banquet when we gather here as one, we enter into the timeless mystery of our Sacred Liturgy when we break this bread and when we share his cup we as a people come together to take a share in his Divinity.

Good friends we are living in a precarious time in our Countries history, more then ever we are called to be light for those who might be living in Spiritual Darkness!

This past weekend tragically six people breathed their last breaths, not knowing that they would be meeting the Lord that morning, two had just come from Mass and had probably just had the opportunity to Behold the Lamb of God before they met him.

The youngest victim Christina Green was featured in a book that was called the faces of hope, and it showed a child from each state who was born on Nine Eleven.

We have had our faith tested many times in recent years, eight years of war, an economy turned upside down.

But this young girl Christina believed in something, bigger then all of our fears she believed in Christ Jesus and in eternal salvation she believed in all of us and our capacity to Love in the face of Evil, in the face of brutal terrorism and in the unseen face of fear mongering. Through God's eternal Mercy her organs were used to save the life of another child.

Paul in our second reading wrote to the church of God which in Corinth, "To those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord ".

Paul is writing to them to guide and support them in their Christian life just as he sends that message to us here today Paul knew something of the problems of that a community could face.

It is at this point that this introduction by Paul begins to open up a new understanding of the world.

Despite our differences there is something that unites us. We are called to be saints with all those who in every place, call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours.

Friends we are all God's children despite our differences,we all belong together, as one family that spans the globe.

This short passage then opens to us the reality of our unity and the universality of the Church. This might seem obvious but we must go one step further.

If we are all called to be saints and we are all on our pilgrim journey together, why do we show such disregard for each other?

Why do we fail to recognize the needs of our sisters and brothers in the Lord?

Perhaps it is because in our busy lives we don't take the time required to get to really know each other.

How many of us here today can count on our hands more then a few REAL friends?

And if we are lucky enough to have true friends why is it that we sometimes do not have the faith and the trust to tell others of the problems we face?

When we try to do it without Jesus we usually face disappointment, but when we walk with Jesus we walk in hope!

We hear so little of the good that goes on in the world; instead we hear only of the horror, the natural disasters and the only-too-human atrocities.

We could be forgiven for thinking that there is only bloodshed and death, that there is no hope in the world.

But this is a distorted view of the world and it remains the image because we often allow ourselves to focus on what divides our faith rather than on what unites it. The Sin of the world is indeed a powerful force to test our will and our faith.

Imagine a different world, or at first a different Church, a Church made up of disciples who speak to one another, or write to one another; and more importantly a Church of disciples who listen to one another and try to understand their situation.

It is together that we follow the Lord, not as individuals, and Paul's greeting reminds us of this.

Saint Bernard said " Unhappy is he who carries the Cross of Jesus, but is not with Jesus".

How can we speak to an unbelieving world when we as Church ignore each other and ignore the plight of our sisters and brothers as well as their joys?

My Dear friends in Christ let us join together as a People of Faith and Hope and offer our prayers for those whose lives were taken from them, and for divine healing for their families and for the survivors of the attack, and also for healing and forgiveness for the young man who's own Spiritual darkness had overcome him.

We today have a sacred obligation within our own lives lived as the light of Christ to never forget that Jesus willingly laid down his life for those sins that we are part of by commission or by omission.

Paul reminds us that we have been Sanctified in Christ Jesus, That we as Children of the LIGHT are called to be the Light of Christ to others. To lead and show others to the ""Lamb of God".

So today as we receive the body and blood of Our Brother Jesus, let our Amen, be one of both wonder and thanks for the salvation that we have been given, won for us by the one that we behold and testify with the gift of our lives in our vocations.

Jesus the one we still to this day call Agnus Dei the "Lamb of God".