Last Sunday we celebrated the feast of the baptism of Our Lord, the feast that marks the inauguration of the public ministry of Our Lord, and the start of ordinary time. Within the space of a few weeks we will enter into the holy season of Lent, and already, as we emerge from the feasting of Christmas, in today’s Gospel our eyes are directed towards the Cross of Our Lord.
Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.
But the Gospel also directs our attention towards another figure whose passion is important, that of St. John the Baptist. Not only does the Gospel direct our attention towards this last, and greatest, of the prophets, but it does so that we may imitate him wholly and completely; so that our entire lives may, like that of the Baptist, be a holocaust dedicated to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
What are the markers of the Baptist that we should contemplate and integrate into our lives?
Now the LORD … formed me as his
servant from the womb,
that Jacob may be brought back to him
and Israel gathered to him;
Baptised into Christ, our only job is to proclaim Him so that the world may be brought back to Him. As the prophet Isaiah prophesies in the first reading today
You are my servant,
Israel, through whom I show my glory.
It is not just through preaching with our lips that we permit ourselves to show the glory of the Lord, but via our every action: the way we raise our children, the way we conduct ourselves at work, the way we bargain in the bazaar, the way we drive and behave in traffic! In all these little ways, our actions should be such that we articulate the glory of the Lord.
The Baptist, of course, distinguished his life by a rigorous asceticism, something that we too should contemplate, now as we prepare ourselves for the Lenten penitence and abstinence that will come. We will be able to achieve this rigour, if, and only if, like the Baptist, we actively pursue holiness. This is the message St.Paul preaches to us today in the extract from his first letter to the Corinthians:
you who have been sanctified in
Christ Jesus, [are] called to be holy,
with all those everywhere who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
their Lord and ours.
The pursuit of holiness, my dear brothers and sisters, is not simply an option for those who, through baptism, have been sanctified in Our Lord; it is an obligation. With Christians everywhere, we are called to be holy.
How exactly we pursue this holiness is laid out for us in the psalm we sing today.
In the written scroll it is
prescribed for me,
to do your will, O my God, is my delight,
and your law is within my heart!
Too often, we know the commandments, and we know the teachings of the Church, but we hesitate, grumbling that we have to act in such a way. The prohibition against the use of contraception, or masturbation for example. We know that these are practices are fundamentally opposed to life, and yet we grumble against them. Holiness is finding in our hearts the capacity to delight in fulfilling the law of Our Lord and His Church.
Too often, perhaps because of the way he is represented in film, the Baptist is thought to be a sullen, rancourous man. Holiness, my dear brothers and sisters, is not about dull and boring lives, but it is about delight. Think of the Baptist leaping for joy at the Visitation! Holiness is about joy, and singing. Listen to these words from the psalm:
I have waited, waited for the LORD,
and he stooped toward me and heard my cry.
And he put a new song into my mouth,
a hymn to our God.
The cry of our solitude, of our being resigned to the darkness is heard by Our God, and from the moment of baptism he puts a song and a hymn into our mouths. Brothers and sisters, from the moment of our baptism holiness is the norm. It is the norm from which we may sometimes fall, but we can always repent and return to this norm through recourse to the sacraments – confession and the Eucharist. And no matter the trials in our lives, the love of God gives us the capacity to sing. No more the sullenness and unhappiness of sin!
When we truly get in touch with this truth, my dear brothers and sisters; when we are joyful in holiness, joyous in understanding the truths of our faith and the joy that comes from its practice, there is nothing that can constrain us. As the psalm sings:
I announced your justice in the
vast assembly;
I did not restrain my lips, as you, O LORD, know.
Our joy frees us, and there are no more restraints, no matter the situation in which we find ourselves.
For those who, like John the Baptist, are faithful to the call to holiness, Our God makes an extravagant promise:
It is too little, the LORD says,
for you to be my servant,
to raise up the tribes of Jacob,
and restore the survivors of Israel;
I will make you a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.
A few days ago we celebrated the feast of St. José Vaz, who was, as all Goans should be, a light to the nations. Calling on his prayers let us petition for the grace of the Holy Spirit to grow in holiness, and be a light to the nations among whom we live.
(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful in the Cathedral parish of St. Catherine of Alexandria, Old Goa on 17 January 2026.)
(Image reference: St.John the Baptist, Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1550 – 1552, Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan.)
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