Fr. Jorge Miró shares with Exaudi readers his commentary on the  Gospel of Sunday, January 18, 2026,  entitled, “This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

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With the Christmas season over, we begin Ordinary Time, the time of struggle, the time to live the faith in an ordinary way in daily life, and to do so by listening to and welcoming the preaching of Jesus as a  path to holiness, that is, of faith and friendship with Jesus, the Master and Lord.

Throughout this year we will be listening to Jesus’ preaching, in which he will show us what it means  to be a Christian and what the path of  discipleship is. This year we will do so with the help of the evangelist Saint Matthew.

In these first days of Ordinary Time, the Lord is teaching us to listen. Because we don’t know how to listen. We complain a lot in our daily lives that others don’t listen to us, or that they listen but don’t understand us.

That’s why we need to learn to listen to the Lord, because otherwise, we can spend every Sunday listening to the Word, but it will go in one ear and out the other. Or it will remain only in our heads as information, but it won’t reach our hearts, which is where it needs to go.

For the Word to reach our hearts, we first have to learn to listen and then ask for the Holy Spirit, who speaks to our spirit and seals this Word in our hearts. He reveals and confirms that we are beloved children of God and, therefore, can confidently receive the Word and see how it bears fruit in our lives.

We need to hear Jesus’ call inviting us to conversion: Repent and believe in the Gospel. This is the key to being able to embrace Jesus’ preaching. Jesus spoke with authority. His Word is not just another opinion. Only Jesus has words of eternal life because only He is the Teacher and the Lord. He is the only Lord.

And today the Word has also told us something important:  You do not desire sacrifices or offerings, but you have opened my ear. Here I am, Lord, to do your will. And with this, the Lord is inviting us to discover that we are in the time of the New Covenant. In the Old Covenant, sacrifices and offerings were made. Every day in the temple, a lamb was sacrificed in the morning and another in the evening. In the New Covenant, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world is Jesus Christ. He has offered himself once and for all. And the true sacrifice that the Lord desires for us is told to us by Saint Paul in the Letter to the Romans:  Offer yourselves as a living sacrifice, unblemished, holy, and pleasing to God.

And what makes us pleasing to God? It is being able to say every day, “Here I am, Lord, to do your will.”

Being a Christian is not about moralism, ideology, or philosophy; it means  being born again, of water and the Spirit, and becoming part of a  new family  , the Church, the family of  those who hear the word of God and live by it, with specific brothers and sisters whom the Lord has given you to walk together towards the goal of heaven.

To be a Christian is to live life as a personal encounter with  the living  and  risen Jesus Christ. It is to have discovered that God loves you unconditionally, that He created you out of love, and invites you to live a life of friendship and  personal relationship  with Him.

And  being a disciple  is manifested in living in accordance with the Father’s will. This is the  worship of the New Covenant.

If you open your heart to the Lord and allow yourself to be filled by the Holy Spirit, you too will enjoy the presence of the Holy Spirit, who makes all things new:  I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He put a new song in my mouth.

The Christian path is to accept  Christ as the light  that can illuminate your life, your story, your attitudes, and your actions; and, with that light of Christ in your heart, to let Christ build your life as He desires, to live out the  vocation to holiness.  The Lord invites you to follow Him, to be  holy. Do you dare? Or perhaps you are “afraid” that the Lord will change your life “too much”?

Come, Holy Spirit!