2nd Sunday Ordinary Time - 16/1/2022

With feast of the Baptism of the Lord we completed the Christmas season. Now the Liturgy invites us to enter into the Ordinary Season of the year. There are three different years of Ordinary Time readings, one for each year in the three year cycle, each having a simple name such as A, B, or C. In every one of these years one particular “synoptic” Gospel writer is featured, Mark, Matthew, or Luke. We are now in year C, which we began in Advent. Ordinary Time for this year will feature the Gospel according to Luke. The following words will be proclaimed before the Gospel reading each Sunday: “A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke.”

To make things a little complicated, however, this year’s Second Sunday of Ordinary Time does not have a reading from Luke’s Gospel. The Church has used instead a reading from the Gospel of John, one about an event which took place before Jesus’ public life, as Jesus says explicitly “My hour has not yet come”. One way to look at this anomaly is to say that the present Sunday is a brief transition, meant to prepare us and raise our expectations concerning the Messiah and the Good News

This weekend’s readings bring to our reflection the favorite metaphor of marriage in the Hebrew Bible imaging God’s relationship with the people of God. Yahweh is to Israel as husband is to wife. Think of Hosea's comparison of his troubled marriage with the story of God's relationship with Israel. The oracles of Isaiah use this tradition about Israel's future (even messianic) restoration, as for example in this Sunday's first reading, where the coming vindication of Jerusalem is portrayed as a wedding feast for God and his spouse.

Jesus himself used this metaphor several times. When the Pharisees ask why Jesus’ disciples are not into extra fasting like those of the Baptist (Mk 2:18), he replies, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?” He continues the metaphor by speaking of his presence and ministry as “new wine” demanding new wineskins. The night before he died, he told his disciples that ‘he is going to prepare a place for them ’. This parting message is usually spoken by the groom after the week of wedding celebrations before he takes his bride to their new home.

This background helps us appreciate the account of the wedding feast of Cana. Far more is going on here than an affirmation that Jesus had a good party or was affirming the institution of marriage. Both are surely true.
 

But in the Fourth Evangelist’s framework, the wedding feast at Cana is nothing less than the revelation of divinity in Jesus as Word made flesh. Cana, in a sense, acts this out. Take the jars of water that become wine. One hundred twenty to one hundred eighty gallons of wine is a great deal. And John is careful to note that the containers are stone jars, that is, vases not made the usual ceramic way, out of clay worked and baked, but sculpted out of blocks of stone. Such jars were costly, the very best, and always pure because they were nonporous. John notes that there are six and that they are there for the purpose of Jewish ritual washing. The symbolism is clear. As stone and large, they are special and abundant; but as only six (not seven – symbol of perfection), they are incomplete. When people do what Jesus says, water becomes a surprising abundance of the best wine of all. The bridegroom has arrived with new wine. The wedding party of the new covenant has begun.

First of all, this wedding scene teaches us that our human lives are made up of different times, different moments: there’s a time for celebration, for falling in love, but there’s also a time when the wine runs out and the celebration is in danger of ending earlier than expected. There are times in which God reveals himself in our lives and times in which He chooses to remain silent. There are times in life when we are rich and we can invite others to participate in our joy and there are times when we are poor, like this couple, who did not have enough wine to share. But I like to think that the wine ran out because there were more guests than expected: it makes me think of a couple that knows how to welcome all without counting, a couple with a love so deep they make everyone around them always feel at home. It would be beautiful if every home ran out of wine due to their great hospitality. Only when we share all the wine we have, only if we let it all be consumed, only then will Christ come to repeat His miracle, giving us not just any wine, but the best. Jesus does not only change water into wine but he also transforms the jars. They are no longer instruments for the carrying out of the law but become the source of joy.

The overabundance of this miracle recalls the prophecy of Amos, who says to a falling House of Israel: “the days are coming (when)… the mountains shall drip with the juice of the grapes, and all the hills shall run with it. I will restore my people, Israel…” (Am 9:13-14). This prophecy comes after God promises, through Amos, that although He will scatter Israel into exile for their sins, He will call them back and reestablish them under a King from the house of David. The invitation to us is to allow Christ to enter into our human situation and transform it.

Blessings,

Fr Tom Kunnel, C.O