CHRIST JESUS IS THE LAMB OF GOD (Jn 1:29-34)
Dear friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, today the Gospel of John invites us to contemplate a moment of profound revelation, an instant in which heaven opens and the mystery of God is revealed among us. Jesus walks among the crowd, hidden among the common people, as one of us. He does not impose himself with fanfare, he does not seek applause or recognition. He is there, humble and discreet, in the middle of the Jordan River, where John the Baptist is baptizing. But suddenly, John sees him and cannot remain silent: "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" These words are not a simple greeting; they are a decisive testimony, a cry that tears the veil of the ordinary to reveal the divine. John the Baptist, the forerunner, plays a fundamental role in this narrative. He, who baptized with water to prepare the way, now points to Jesus and proclaims him as the one who "was before me." Here, dear friends, John reminds us that Jesus is not just any prophet: He is the Eternal One, the pre-existent Son of God, who existed before time, as faith teaches us. He is the suffering Servant announced by the prophet Isaiah (cf. Is 53), the one who takes upon himself the wounds of the world to heal them. And above all, he is the Paschal Lamb, symbol of the apocalyptic expectation of the Jewish people: not just any lamb, but the one who offers himself as a sacrifice to free us from sin, just as the lamb sacrificed at the Jewish Passover prefigured redemption.