2ND SUNDAY OF THE YEAR A 2020

DOCTRINE AND FAITH

(Isaiah 49,3.5-6; Psalm 39; 1Cor 1, 1-3; John 1,29-34: 2nd Sunday of the Year A, 2020)

The first reading taken from the second canticle of the Servant hints to a predestined vocation of the servant of God: He shaped me (his servant) from the mother’s womb (twice, vv. 1 and 5). The mission of this servant of God is twofold: Firstly, the completion of the history of Israel through her conversion: To restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back the survivors of Israel and secondly, to see to the extension of universal salvation by being the light of the nations, thus bringing the whole world within the orbit of salvation promised to Israel.

In the second reading, Paul notes that he is called (link with the 1st reading and Gospel). But he is called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ, while the Servant is called to restore the tribes of Jacob.

In the gospel reading, John the Baptist is presented as a witness to Jesus Christ; it is one of the most important themes of the Gospel of John (cf., prologue: John 1,7-8. 15. 19-28). The evangelist tells how John the Baptist was oriented towards Jesus, and how Jesus was made known to him. John the Baptist affirms the essential of his mission: to announce the superiority, the divine authority (He was before me) of Jesus, and to point it out to his disciples: I have seen the Spirit… resting on him).

One wonders from which optics we can organize the message of today’s reading? There is a link between the first reading and the Gospel in the presentation of their protagonists. The first reading presents the figure of the Servant, chosen from the bosom of his mother to be light of the nations, while the Gospel reading speaks about the Son of God on whom the Spirit of the Lord rests, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Biblical tradition at one time or the other identifies this servant with the Lord Jesus Christ. Maybe it could be appropriate to deepen our knowledge of the main protagonist of today’s gospel reading by inquiring: who is Jesus Christ? Is it not redundant after all our attention has focused on him over the course of several weeks, first during Advent, then during the Christmas season, which ended last Sunday with the feast of the Baptism of the Lord. On the other hand, the superficial knowledge about Jesus’ coming from our modern-day Christians makes us realize how true it is even today that John the Baptist declared to the Pharisees’ envoys: In your midst stands one you do not know (John 1,26). Even today many do not know much more about him than what the Roman governor Porcius Festus was able to say to King Agrippa exposing the case of Paul who, accused by the majority of the Jews, had appealed to the emperor: it was a matter of some matters relating to their particular religion and concerning a certain dead Jesus whom Paul claimed to be still alive (Acts 25,19). A certain Jesus: who has not heard of him, at least in countries that call themselves Christians? But who would be able to answer him if he asked us, like he did to his disciples at Caesarea Philippi: Who do you say that I am? (Matt 16,15).

“Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God”

Since reference was made to the episode of Caesarea, it is convenient to take note of Simon Peter’s reply, even if it does not appear today in the liturgy of the word: You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus approves this response and declares it as having been inspired by the heavenly Father. In the past few weeks it has been repeated to us in various forms. The readings presented Jesus to us as the Son of God by means by which he spoke to men, irradiation of his glory and imprint of his substance; word made flesh and came to dwell among us; life and light of men, the only begotten of the father (Christmas); again as the son of god and son of Mary, born of a woman, in Bethlehem; called Jesus, that is, saviour (solemnity of the Mother of God); Father’s favorite son (baptism); servant of the lord and lord of all (today’s liturgy). Now let’s stop on the answers the liturgy gives us. These are not systematic and complete definition, but if we listen carefully and faithfully, they will help us to answer, as far as possible on dealing with the man-God, the question: who is Jesus?  Jesus is the servant of God! If it is difficult to identify who the prophet, a disciple of Isaiah who worked in the second half of the sixth century BC, towards the end of the exile directly refers, there is no doubt that the Christian tradition, starting from the new testament, sees in the servant the messiah, Jesus Christ. The lord sent him not only to bring back to him the people of Israel, to whom Jesus’ preaching was addressed almost exclusively, but he made him light of the nations (old Simeon will greet him thus (Luke 2,32) to bring salvation to the whole world, to which he will send his apostle. He is the servant of the lord who came to do the father’s will in all things: I always do the things that are pleasing to him (John 8,29); not what I want, but what you want (Mark 14,36). The responsorial psalm, in a passage that the letter to the Hebrews put into the mouth of Christ as he enters the world holds: entering the world, Christ says (Hebrew 10, 5), presents the will of God as an absolute norm that inspires the whole life of his servant: behold, I come, lord, to do your will. On the scroll of the book, it is written of me to do your will. My God, this I desire, your law and in the depths of my heart.  Jesus was servant of God as well as servant of men: the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve (Matt. 20:28).

Jesus is also: our lord Jesus Christ! In the greeting with which Paul begins his first letter to the community of Corinth, Jesus Christ is named four times, and three times is called our lord. He is such because he is the messiah and son of God. He knew that the father had given everything into his hands (John 13,3); all that the father possesses is mine (John 16,15); I have been given all power in heaven and on earth (Matt 28,18). Jesus Christ and the lord (Phil 2,11): it was the profession of faith of the first Christians, which they repeated, to the point of bearing witness to it with blood, in front of the pagans, refusing to recognize in the emperor the lordship that belongs only to Jesus. Lord and servant are two presentation of Jesus Christ that do not contradict each other. Shortly after the passage reported in the reading, the prophet continues: the kings will see and stand up, the princes will see and bow down, because of the lord who is faithful, because of the holy one of Israel who has chosen you (Isaiah 49.7). The fourth song of the servant of the lord begins: Behold, my servant will be successful, he will be lifted up (Isaiah 52,13); and it ends again with an exaltation of his power: I will give him multitudes as a prize, he will spoil the might (Isaiah 53,12). The evangelist john, after saying that Jesus knew that the father had given him everything in his hands, presents in the act of washing the feet of the apostles the lesson that Jesus himself draws from his act: you call me master and lord and so I am. So if I, the lord and the master, have washed your feet, you too must wash one another’s feet, in fact, I have given you an example, because as I did you too must do (John 13,13-15). Jeusu is lord: as such we must worship him; obey him by observing his law, which is the law of love; take upon us his yoke, which is sweet, its load, which is light (cf matt 11, 29-30). Jesus, servant of God and Lord, made himself our servant. We must like him and like Mary, the servant of the lord (Luke 1,38, cf v. 48), make God’s will the norm of our life, in observance of his law, which has its fulfilment in the love (cf. romans 13,10). In accepting what he has in our daily affairs, even when the cross awaits us, repeating what the faithful disciples of Paul said, after having unsuccessfully tried to dissuade him, with prayers and tears, from going to Jerusalem, facing mortal risks: The will of the Lord be done (acts 21, 12-14). We must, like the psalmist, put ourselves in an attitude of hope. This is suggested by St Augustine commenting on psalm 39: I hoped, not in any man who promises and who can deceive and be deceived, not in any man who consoles, who can come to me for his sadness before being able to console us. My brother man consoles me when he is sad with me: together we moan, together we cry, together we pray, together we hope: in whom, if not in the lord who does not fail his promise but only differs it? Already St. Ambrose, affirming that holds << I waited, Lord Jesus, and one day you came to me, you guided my steps in the gospel, you put a new song on my mouth, which is the new testament. By now we sing with joy the hymn to our God. Like the lord, we must make ourselves servants of one another. St. Paul shows us the way: By refusing shameful dissimulations, without behaving with cunning or falsifying the word of God, but openly announcing the truth, we make ourselves servants of the brothers for the love of Jesus (2 Cor 4, 2.5).

Jesus is also the lamb of God! With these words the Baptist point to Jesus to the people. With this epithet he does not diminish Jesus greatness, son of God and Lord, on the contrary he recognizes it openly: He was before me… I testified that he is the son of God. Pointing to Jesus as the lamb of God who takes away [or takes upon himself] the sins of the world; John echoes the songs of the servant: The lord God has opened my ear and I have not resisted, I did not withdraw back. I presented my back to the flagellators, the cheek to those who tore off my beard; I have not removed my face from insults and spitting (Isaiah 50,5-6). But see above all the last song: “Despised and rejected by men, a man of pain who knows very well how to suffer, like someone before whom one covers his face, was despised and had no esteem. Yet he took on our sufferings, took on our pains and we judged him chastised, beaten by God and humiliated. He was pierced for our crimes, crushed for his wounds we have been healed. We were all lost like a flock, each of us followed his own path; the lord made the iniquities of us all fall upon him. Abused, he let himself be humiliated and did not open his mouth, he was like a lamb brought to the slaughterhouse, like a sheep silent in front of his shearers, and does not open his mouth (Isaiah 53,3-7).

Jesus replaces, as the only victim of the new covenant, the many victims who offered themselves under the law, as the responsorial psalm mentioned above, quoted from the letter to the Hebrews, where the author comments: With this, he abolishes the first order of things to establish the second. And it is precisely, because of that we have been sanctified, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ, made once and for all (Heb 10, 5-10). Do we need to say that we must look, with infinite gratitude to Jesus, our lord, who made himself a servant and a lamb for us? That we must imitate him, the lamb meek and humble of heart (Matt 11,29); accept, like him, to sacrifice ourselves for our brothers? To this the Holy Mass invites us, particularly during which we invoke the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world and this lamb is presented to us as food to communicate his life to us. May we therefore in today’s Eucharistic Celebration, open ourselves to God and request for the grace that will enable us follow the example of our model, our lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, our Saviour and lamb of God who perfectly carried out the will of God the Father! Happy New Year! +John I. Okoye