2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
St. Lambert Parish, 16 January 2022
Is
62:1-5
1
Cor 12:4-11
Jn
2:1-11
It is kind of rare to find people who think about their
relationship with God using the language of Isaiah the prophet. To ask why that
is, is not the point, but to note the fact is important and could challenge us
to look more closely at how we understand faith’s role in our lives. Making
room in our lives for an appreciation of this marriage imagery and the
relational character of the life of faith which exists between God and us could
make the faith which is ours more what it should be. Isaiah is speaking of a
relationship between God and a nation, Zion or Jerusalem. We as Catholics have
a communal identity as God’s people as well. Our faith must have a relational
impact on our particular lives as part of that people, His Church, beloved of
God in Jesus Christ.
“For
the Lord delights in you and makes your land his spouse. As a young man marries
a virgin, your Builder shall marry you; and as a bridegroom rejoices in his
bride so shall your God rejoice in you.”
Can
you believe that it is already the 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time? In
the kind of circles I frequent, there is always lots of back and forth at this
time of year about when Christmas is really over. Apart from various family
traditions about when to take down the tree and store the crib scene for
another year, everyone seems to have an opinion: Do you take things down on New
Year’s Day? Is the Epiphany the last day to celebrate? Is it the Baptism of the
Lord which closes the season? Or should Christmas have a lively place in our
hearts, homes, and parish churches all the way through the feast of the
Presentation in the Temple on February 2nd?
I bring this point up because of the readings assigned for
this, the Second Sunday of Ordinary Time. I am thinking, yes, about this quote
from the prophet Isaiah, but even more so about the Gospel of John recounting
the miracle, His first, which Jesus worked at His Mother’s behest at the Wedding
Feast in Cana, changing water into wine so that the party could go on. You see,
Cana is central to the Christmas feast. It is as much Epiphany as are the Magi
and the Baptism of the Lord by John in the Jordan. The divine office, the
Liturgy of Hours at Evening Prayer for the feast, best recounts the great
mystery of Epiphany in the antiphon for the Magnificat:
“Three mysteries mark this holy day: today the star leads
the Magi to the infant Christ; today water is changed into wine for the wedding
feast; today Christ wills to be baptized by John in the river Jordan to bring
us salvation.”
Ordinary Time or not, in reflecting on the Lord’s first
public miracle at Cana in Galilee, we are still very much in the spirit of
Epiphany, of Christ’s manifestation. What is my point? Why do I bring this up?
I suppose because I worry an awful lot about the Church fulfilling its mission.
What is our mission as baptized people if not to make Christ manifest to our
world? Different from the wise men and the star and even very different from
the manifestation of Christ at the Jordan, a wedding party is a wedding party
and very much a part, a beautiful part, of real life. Ultimately, I as a bishop,
okay retired, but still an uppity up in the Church, I need to be showing Jesus,
True God and True Man, to the world around me. That essentially is my mission. I
have by reason of Holy Orders a role to play in making the Lord known, in
glorifying His Name before the nations. Beyond good example, preaching and
teaching is the lion’s share of my task. Baptized into Christ that is the job
of all of you as well, to make Him manifest. We do it less by preaching but
rather in real human terms as is evidenced in the language of this Sunday. By
our lives we make Christ manifest and thereby treat everyone we encounter to
the marvel of the water of humanity in those stone jars changed into the truly
great wine of life at one with the Lord.
“For the Lord delights in you and
makes your land his spouse. As a young man marries a virgin, your
Builder shall marry you; and as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride so shall
your God rejoice in you.”
If we believe all the surveys out there, it would be hard not
to conclude that Catholic people, at least in the Western World (Europe and the
Americas for sure), are more disconnected from life when it comes to the faith
than they, than we have been in a long time. How long? In a sense the length of
time doesn’t matter, and we can argue from the principle in Church law about
custom as a source of law, which establishes that an
immemorial custom is any one which has been held or practiced as long as
anyone can remember or at least for more than 50 years [an immemorial custom].
I would contend that our disconnect has been forever. To make my point another
way, many Catholics for over two generations at least haven’t had much of
anything invested personally in the faith. They may identify as Catholics
without giving any evidence of what that might mean in their everyday lives.
The imagery of the romance of bridegroom and bride is lost on them.
Oh! Archbishop! How can you say that? Easily! Ask yourself,
even if it is not your favorite way of describing your faith if you can at
least appreciate doing it by identifying with the bride and bridegroom imagery
of the prophet Isaiah to describe your relationship with Christ in His Holy
Church! Is that really necessary? Must it be? I think yes, even if wedding
feasts are not exactly an everyday thing. If entered into rightly, the imagery
of holy matrimony can be a beautiful and upbeat interpretive key for what we
mean by “for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, until death do us
part”. I am talking about living the faith so as to give witness of its truth
and beauty to the world around us. I am talking about how we pass the faith on
to our children. I have my childhood memories [more than 50 years ago] from
both Mom and Dad of how they passed on or witnessed to the good wine of our
Catholic faith! It was nothing flashy, but it was genuine, and they shared
their faith with us very simply, naturally if you will, without being preachy
or pretentious. I miss that as a general pattern in our families today.
“For the Lord delights in you and makes your land his
spouse.” If I can appreciate God’s love for me, how He delights in me, how
can I resist sharing it with those around me, who should be confirmed in that
good news as well? The message we have to share is sublime, but we do so as
naturally and normally as we can, even if what we have to share is the shockingly
great news of how we are loved by God.
“When the wine ran short, the mother of Jesus said to him,
‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, how does your concern
affect me? My hour has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servers, ‘Do
whatever he tells you.’”
The scripture scholars all have their pet theories about why
Jesus responded as He did to His Mother. “Woman, how does your concern
affect me?” Mary didn’t bat an eye: “His mother said to the servers, ‘Do
whatever he tells you.’”
It is not much of a message for this Sunday, but like Mary,
we should not bat an eye in asking and being confident that the Lord can change
our water into wine for the sake of the feast. Confess Jesus for Who He is, let
Him be made manifest in your homes and in our world as the one who loves us and
delights in us just like the bridegroom does in his bride.
Praised be Jesus Christ!
PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI
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