What does our
relationship with God call us to?
In John’s Gospel,
Jesus performs his first miracle (albeit reluctantly) at a wedding at Cana in Galilee, at the request of his mother, who
simply states, They have no wine. No one wants a new marriage to be marred by difficulty
from day one, and so Jesus does the extraordinary: Fill
the jars with water, he tells the servers, and then, Draw some out. The wine the
headwaiter tastes is of the highest quality, a fitting tribute to the bond of
souls the wedding is intended to celebrate, and a good reason to sing to the Lord, as Psalm 96 exhorts, to
proclaim his marvelous deeds to all the
nations. The miracle at Cana is a foretaste of the messianic banquet, of
our ultimate union with God in heaven – and a revelation of God’s glory.
Jesus’ marvelous
deed at the wedding in Cana reminds us of the centrality of the marriage metaphor
in salvation history, wherein God calls
the people of Israel by a new name to
celebrate a return to covenant relationship:
you shall be called My Delight and your land Espoused, Isaiah says. It
is as a marriage bond that Isaiah characterizes the relationship between God and
Jerusalem, a relationship in which God
shall rejoice, for it is grounded in love shared, love celebrated.
Moreover, it is
out of that bond of relationship that the Holy Spirit is able to bestow upon us
all, as St. Paul tells the Corinthians, different
kinds of spiritual gifts, gifts we are meant to employ to be of benefit for each other. Remember that we are called as a church to be
the Bride of Christ; Jesus loves us as a bridegroom loves his bride. And the love he shares with us, if we are
open to it, opens us further to giving in turn, using our gifts to build up
each other’s lives, yet recognizing at every moment that it is God who produces all of these gifts – manifestations
of the Spirit – in everyone. It is yet
another reason to proclaim God’s
marvelous deeds to all the nations, as we are invited to participate in God’s
extraordinary action and so embrace the identity that is ours, an identity
grounded in service and love.
This post is based
on notes from Fr. Pat’s 2016 homily on the readings for the Second Sunday in
Ordinary Time.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com
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