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Saturday, January 18, 2014

2nd Ordinary Sunday, Year A, 19.01.2014

Isaiah 49:3,5-6/ 1 Corinthians 1:1-3/ John 1:29-34

The act of kneeling, to say the least, is a very profound act.

In the religious sense, the act of kneeling expresses the worship and adoration in the presence of the divine.

We may remember that on the feast of the Epiphany, the wise men came from the east and when they finally found the Child Jesus, they fell to their knees and did Him homage.

Indeed, we kneel only to the holy and the divine. It is an act of submission and reverence.

Just like when we came to the Church, and before we go to our seat at the pew, we would at least genuflect (going down on one knee) because we acknowledge the presence of God in Church.

It may seem to be like some kind of exercise for the knees, but it is typically Catholic, and maybe even habitually Catholic.

It may be so typical and habitual that some people might see it as comical.

They say that you will know when a Catholic goes for a movie in the cinema. 

He will walk down the aisle, genuflect and then go to his seat (Catholics are also creature of habit).

Nonetheless, the act of kneeling is a powerful sign of witnessing in the worshipping of the divine.

Yes, when we kneel, we lower ourselves before God and we acknowledge that God is our Creator and we are His creatures. We are nothing without Him.

So it is only right and proper that we go to God and not expect Him to come to us.

We lower ourselves before God and certainly not the other way around. We don’t expect God to lower Himself to us.

Yet in the gospel, we heard that Jesus came to John the Baptist.

And in some religious art about the baptism of Jesus, we see Jesus kneeling before John the Baptist for baptism.

Or at least Jesus stands lower than John the Baptist for His baptism.

The baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist had been a difficult issue for the early Church.

Why must Jesus, the Son of God, the sinless one, be baptized by John?

And yet the baptism of Jesus is recorded in all four gospels.

Certainly, there must be something about Jesus that the gospels want to tell us.

In today’s gospel, that something about Jesus is revealed by John the Baptist when he said, “Look, there is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

Jesus has many titles “Saviour”, “Teacher”, “Healer”. But it was John the Baptist who called Jesus the “Lamb of God”.

And Jesus the Lamb of God had a specific mission – to take away the sin of the world.

Indeed, the ways of God are rather strange. To take away the sin of the world, He didn’t send a mighty army of angels or warriors, or use an arsenal of powerful devastating weapons to exterminate the wicked and the evil.

Even if it comes to using animals as a symbol, a more mighty or powerful one can be used, eg, eagle or lion.

But it is the symbol of the meek and gentle lamb, that is silent before its shearers, and does not put up a resistance when it is lead to the slaughter house that takes away the sin of the world.

Yes, Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

And He showed us how to do it. We may remember that after the Last Supper and before He was arrested, He and His disciples went to the Garden of Gethsemane.

There Jesus prayed and underwent great distress in what we call the “Agony of the Garden”.

There was a gesture that He made during His prayer. The gospel of Luke said that Jesus knelt and prayed.

The gospels of Matthew and Mark said that Jesus fell prostrate on the ground as He prayed.

Yes, Jesus knelt and lowered Himself so that He could take away the sin of the world.

And before we can look at the sin of the world, we have to look at the sin of the Church.

Last Thursday, the Catholic Church was slammed at the United Nations on how the Church had handled the cases of sex abuse by the clergy.

Pope Francis denounced the sex abuse as the “Shame of the Church”. Yes, this is the sin of the Church.

We, the Church have to kneel and fall prostrate on the ground to beg for God’s mercy to take away this sin of the Church even before we can address the sin of the world.

God has made the Church the light of the nations so that His salvation may reach to the ends of the world.

But we have failed; we have sinned; we need to be saved first; we need to have our sin taken away.

So, we must kneel, we must even fall prostrate on the ground and beg for mercy and forgiveness.

Then we can become lambs of God who will take away the sin of the world.