Sunday Homily

Fr. Tom Lucas, S.J.

January 18, 2026

Today, my friends, we are launched back into ordinary time again. The stable and the ponsettias and the trees are gone, the sanctuary is swept, and the gold vestments put away again until easter, replaced by ordinary green. Last weekend we celebrated the baptism of the Lord, with a full account from Matthew’s gospel. 

As our liturgical year moves into the remembrance of the public ministry and ordinary teaching of Jesus, today we have one last meeting with the mysterious and difficult figure of John the Baptist, the last and greatest of the prophets of the Old Testament, the one sent to announce the immanent coming of the Lord Jesus. He was the last in the line of Jeremiah and Elijah, a firebreather who called the people to task and who reminded them of their infidelity to the promises of the covenant. His mission, we are told, was to preach repentance, a change of heart, a return to Godly ways. His preaching moved many, but frightened others who saw his message as disruptive, even threatening. On fire with love of God’s law and zealous for the righteousness that should accompany it, he cut a challenging figure. 

John had already preached this message of repentence, of change of heart, and offered baptism as a sign of acceptance to those who sought to follow the way of righteousness. Yet today’s account of John’s encounter with Jesus differs dramatically from those we hear in Matthew, Mark and Luke. Those three texts tell us that Jesus came to John, sought him out, and asked for his baptism, although he himself had no need of it. In those three texts, the epiphany, the shining forth of Jesus’s sonship and his relation to the Holy spirit came at the moment when Jesus descended into the waters of the Jordan. Here, in John’s gospel of light, we hear that just upon seeing Jesus, John perceived the spirit of God already upon him, and so proclaimed him Jesus Son of God, light from light. 

John was an extraordinary man, a visionary, one whose mind and heart and senses were attuned so finely that he could perceive the light of God shining in the face of Jesus, and the power of the spirit of God descending upon him. John saw, and believed, and proclaimed the power of God, the spirit of God at work in an ordinary looking Galilean. And in doing so, he laid out the pattern of the life of Christian witness ever since. 

We may not see Jesus walking along Arden Way as John saw him on the banks of the Jordan, but we still can hear him in the Word that is announced here, and see him and taste him in the sacrament of the altar he left us, his own body and blood, for our nourishment and strength. While we may not have John’s immediate faith-filled vision, still, we believe that Jesus is the revelation of God’s love and the only true hope of the world. We believe because of the witness of all those, beginning with John, who proclaimed Jesus as Lord and who have lived out of that proclamation. We trust them because they passed along this message with love, and with the examples of lives lived in service. 

And perhaps most simply, we proclaim Jesus with our deeds of mercy and love which follow the pattern of his gifts to his people, the gifts of love and grace and mercy that we have received so that we can give them away. Our own baptism marked our own transformation in the Spirit of God, our entry into a life and a community of proclamation. Our communion with him in the Eucharist we celebrate here is a sharing in the gift of his body and blood, and our confirmation a ratification of our faith and hope and love for him. 

Today as we hear John give witness, let take the Lamb of God into our hearts anew, and rejoice that he is with us always, even unto the end of the world. Let us see, believe, and proclaim him, Son of God and Lord of All.