(s.m.) The nativity of Jesus is also an “epiphany,” a manifestation of the nuptial union between Christ and the Church. In the liturgy of the Christmas season, the hastening of the Magi with their gifts, the baptism in the Jordan of him who is the Lamb of God, and the water turned into wine at the wedding at Cana are all linked with the account of the nativity.
Just like in this wonderful antiphon of the Ambrosian liturgy, in the Mass for Epiphany :
“Hodie caelesti Sponso iuncta est Ecclesia, quoniam in Iordane lavit eius crimina. Currunt cum munere Magi ad regales nuptias ; et ex aqua facto vino laetantur convivia. Baptizat miles Regem, servus Dominum suum, Ioannes Salvatorem. Aqua Iordanis stupuit, columba protestatur, paterna vox audita est : Filius meus hic est, in quo bene complacui, ipsum audite.”
Translated, it says :
“Today the Church is united with the heavenly Spouse, because in the Jordan he washed away her sins. The Magi hasten with gifts to the royal wedding, and the guests rejoice at the water made wine. The soldier baptizes the King, the servant his Lord, John the Savior. The water of the Jordan is amazed, the dove bears witness, the voice of the Father is heard : This is my Son, in whom I am well pleased ; listen to him.”
This is an epiphanic blossoming, which is condensed in the identification of Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29) and is realized in every Eucharist, rightly introduced with the words of the angel in Revelation 19:9 : “Blessed are those invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb.”
There is an extraordinary homily of Benedict XVI, unpublished until a few days ago, which reveals the profound meaning of this very image of the Lamb of God and therefore also of the Christmas epiphany.
He gave it on January 19, 2014, a year after his resignation from the papacy, at the Vatican monastery “Mater Ecclesiae” where he had retired. It has been published in the second volume of his unpublished homilies from 2005 to 2017, printed this December by Libreria Editrice Vaticana with the title : “God is the true reality.”
The Mass is that of the Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A, with readings from Isaiah 49:3,5 – 6, Psalm 40, First Letter to the Corinthians 1:1 – 3, and John 1:29 – 34.
The reproduction of the homily has been authorized by the publisher, and Settimo Cielo offers it to its readers with warmest wishes for a Merry Christmas.
And goodbye until after Epiphany !
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The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world
by Benedict XVI
Homily for the Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A, January 19, 2014
Dear friends, in the Gospel we heard John the Baptist’s testimony about Jesus. He points to three elements : first, “the Lamb of God”; second, “he was before me,” thus indicating pre-existence, meaning that this Jesus, though arriving late in history, always was, and is the Son of God ; and third, this Jesus not only preaches, not only calls to conversion, but gives a new life, a new birth, gives us a new origin by drawing us to himself.
In these three elements the entire Christological faith of the Church is present : faith in redemption from sin, faith in the divinity of Christ, and faith in the new birth of us Christians. There is not only confession and doctrine, but also liturgical worship : the first point, the Lamb of God, signifies the Christian Passover, signifies the mystery of the Eucharist, and the third indicates the mystery of Baptism ; thus the fundamental sacraments and the fundamental faith in the divinity of Jesus are present.
So as not to take too long, I would now like to meditate with you on just the first point, which is perhaps also the most difficult for us : “The Lamb of God, he who takes away the sin of the world.” What does it mean that the Son of God, Jesus, is called “lamb, lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”?
This word, “lamb,” is a fundamental word in Sacred Scripture : we find it from Genesis to Revelation, indeed it is the central word of Revelation, since here Jesus appears 28 times as the lamb and the center of the world’s history.
Let us look at three fundamental texts. We find a first hint, a first prediction, in the story of Abraham : the sacrifice of Isaac (cf. Gen 22). God had called Abraham to give his son, who was his future, the relationship between him and the promise, and was therefore his own life. In giving Isaac he was renouncing the future, renouncing his own life, and this was the call : to give himself in his son. But at the moment he means to kill his son, moving from the fundamental act of the heart to the outward act of sacrifice, God intervenes, prevents him, and Abraham himself finds and sees, entangled in the bush, a lamb, and understands : “God himself provides me with the gift.” God does not want our death, but our life, and we can only give God the gifts that he himself gives, as we say in the first Eucharistic Prayer : God himself gives me what I can give, what I give is always his gift, to God I give himself.
In the Gospel of St. John – in chapter eight – there is a surprising text, in which Jesus says : “Abraham saw my day and was glad” (Jn 8:56). We do not know what the Evangelist is referring to ; we do not know how and when Abraham saw God’s day so as to be glad, but perhaps we can think clearly of this moment in which he sees the lamb and thus, from afar, sees the true lamb, the God who becomes lamb, the God who gives himself in the Son, and seeing this greatness of the love of God, who gives himself by becoming lamb, he rejoices, understanding all the beauty of his faith, the greatness, goodness, and love of God.
The other two fundamental texts are the one in Exodus, the institution of the Passover (cf. Ex 12:1 – 14), and the other in the prophet Isaiah, the fourth song of the Servant of God (cf. Is 52:13 – 53,12). In that of Isaiah, in a twofold sense, the Servant appears as a lamb ; it says : “He behaves like a lamb, like a sheep led to the slaughter, he no longer opens his mouth,” he lets himself be killed without resisting. But beyond the fact that the Servant behaves like a lamb destined for death, there is something deeper, and that is that the word “Servant” (taljā' in Aramaic), which can also be interpreted as “lamb,” that is, the Servant himself is the lamb, in the Servant the destiny of the lamb is realized, he becomes the lamb for us all.
The text of Exodus is the institution of the Passover. As we know, it is the night of liberation from Egypt, and the blood of the lamb defends Israel from death and at the same time opens the door to freedom ; it is the night of liberation, the night of victory over death, the night of freedom : all centered on the blood of the lamb. Therefore it is so important that, in chapter 19 of his Gospel, St. John tells us that Jesus was pierced by the Roman soldier precisely at the moment when the Passover lambs were being killed in the temple. This identification, this contemporaneity down to the minute, tells us : “The true lamb is Jesus.” The lamb as animal cannot liberate, it cannot defend us from death ; the lamb is only a sign, a sign of anticipation. The true lamb dies at that moment : Jesus is the Paschal lamb, and thus begins the true Passover, the liberation from death, the emergence into the freedom of the children of God.
It is very difficult for us today to understand these mysterious things. The mystery of the Incarnation and the Pascha, that is, that God becomes one of us and bears our burdens, is hard for us to grasp today. I would like to try to offer two ideas to bring us closer to understanding it.
The first : the angel of God recognizes God’s friends by the blood of the lamb applied to the lintels of their doors. The blood of the lamb is the sign of God’s friends. Now, how could we be marked in this way ? How can the lintel of the door of my being be marked by the blood of the lamb that God recognizes ? This is a mystery.
Perhaps we can say that being marked by the blood of the lamb, so that God may recognize me, means entering into the sentiments of Jesus, identifying with Jesus. His blood is the sign of his self-giving, of his infinite love, of his identification with us ; entering into the sentiments of Jesus means that truly on the lintel of my being there is this blood, this consanguinity with Jesus, who knows God and recognizes God in us.
Another image also came to my mind : Pope Francis often speaks of the shepherd who must know the scent, the fragrance of the sheep, and have the scent of the sheep himself. We could say : we must begin to know the scent, the fragrance of Christ, and have this fragrance of Christ ourselves, be sheep of Christ with his fragrance, with our way of thinking and living. Let us pray to the Lord to grant us this growing identification, day by day, in the encounter of the Eucharist. May his fragrance become our own, and may God perceive the fragrance of his Son, and thus may we be guided, protected by the divine goodness.
The other idea is : here St. John does not say “the sins of the world,” but “he who bears the sin of the world” (cf. Jn 1:29). It is very difficult to understand this ; I will try to convey it with an approximation. We all know that in the world there is a mass of terrible evil, violence, arrogance, lust ; every day, watching the news on television, reading the newspaper, we see how the mass of evil, of injustice in the world is constantly growing. How can we respond to all this ?
It would only be possible if in the world there were an even greater mass of good, so as to prevail ; only starting from this can there be forgiveness. Forgiveness cannot be just a word, it would change nothing ; forgiveness must be mantled in a prior reality of good that is strong enough to really destroy this evil, to eliminate it.
This is the meaning of the passion of Christ, who with his immolated love creates a mass of good in the world that is infinite, and therefore is always greater than the mass of evil, which is thus overcome, the evil forgiven, the world changed. This is the reality of the lamb, of God who becomes man, becomes lamb, and creates a quantity – so to speak – of love and goodness that is always greater than the whole quantity of evil that exists in the world. Thus he “bears” the evil of the world and calls us to take our position, to put ourselves on his side.
St. Paul used a bold formula : “We must complete what is lacking in the passion of Christ” (cf. Colossians 1:24). Christ’s passion is an infinite treasure, and we can add nothing to it, and yet the Lord calls us to enter into this mass of goodness, to complete it in ourselves with our humble and poor way of life, and thus to stand with Christ in the fight against evil, to help him, knowing at the same time that he also bears my evil and forgives me with the treasure of his intimacy, of his goodness.
All this is not just doctrine ; every day it is reality in the Holy Eucharist. The priest says precisely what St. John says, he gives voice to St. John : “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,” inviting us to see with our hearts this greatness of the love of God, who becomes gift for us, becomes lamb for us, gives himself into our hands.
And before this we sing three times the “Lamb of God,” which is at once a Paschal song about the passion of Christ and the victory of Christ, and a nuptial song, because this communion is also a wedding : Christ gives himself to us, unites himself with us, and thus really brings about humanity’s wedding with God, ushers us into his wedding. The words with which, according to the new liturgy, the priest gives the invitation to communion : “Blessed are those invited to the supper of the Lord,” in the original text of Revelation say : “Blessed are those invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb.” Thus appears the entire mystery of the Eucharist – the wedding of the Lamb, the wedding supper of the Lamb – which is entering into this great event that surpasses our comprehension, our intelligence, yet we can glimpse the greatness of the love of God, who unites himself with us, who calls us to the wedding of nuptial unity in his goodness, in his love.
As I said, in Revelation the lamb appears 28 times : it is the center of the history of the universe ; the universe and history bow down before the lamb (cf. Rev 5:5 – 14). Let us enter into this gesture of the cosmic liturgy, the universal liturgy ; let us bow down before this mystery and pray to the Lord to enlighten us, transform us, and make us participants in this love, in this wedding feast of the Lamb. Amen !
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In the photo above, a detail of the Baptism of Jesus painted by Piero della Francesca, 1440 – 1450, kept at the National Gallery in London.
(Translated by Matthew Sherry : traduttore@hotmail.com)
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Sandro Magister is past “vaticanista” of the Italian weekly L’Espresso.
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