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• Readings for Sunday, January 16th
  
  2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

• If you haven’t read or heard today’s Mass readings for this Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, please read them first and then return below for my thoughts.

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  Today we hear of weddings. In Isaiah, God “marries” his people. God rejoices in his bride, Israel. God says, “You shall be called ‘My Espoused.’”  “I make your land my spouse.”
  
  And we witness Jesus changing water to wine which results in the joy of wedding guests. Most important, the story points to the joy that he brings to the world. The wedding at Cana was a wonderful way the Lord chose to show the world that a good and loving God had come again to his people!
  
  Is there a more joyful time than a wedding? I’ve been officiating at weddings for 46 years now and I see the joy of a couple up close.  For a year or more before their wedding, when we plan together, they share their personal growth, their hopes for the future, the virtues they want to instill in their children. That all culminates in the wedding itself and I have some great memories.
  
  I think of one wedding where the couple, who both had beautiful voices, and who were both instrumentalists, played all their own wedding music.  Of course, it didn’t hurt that they were the music directors at that parish. They were up in front playing organ and guitar, singing to each other and to the whole congregation, and they had all the guests singing. It was rare and beautiful.  
  
  Another great memory was a wedding I went to in an African American Protestant church in Baltimore. In that church all the weddings took place at their one Sunday morning worship service. The entire parish was invited. It was fantastic. And everyone in the parish was invited to the reception, just downstairs in the church hall where they served just punch and cookies. Everyone was so happy to be there. The wedding didn’t cost them a dime. It was incredibly simple. And no one seemed to care that the ritzy Baltimore Country Club lost $25 grand each time that church did that. I don’t want to seem a ‘kill joy’ but it sure seemed to make a lot of sense to me. I often tell our engaged couples here that they could do that. They could have a wedding for no cost at all. No one has ever taken me up on it.
  
  And I think I once told you about the time I performed the marriage of a Holy Cross classmate, Joe. And that ceremony was on campus, up on “the hill,” at ‘the Cross.’  Joe married a Jewish girl, Judy. For some reason at the beginning of the wedding everyone seemed a little tense. Then, I became a little tense, and I welcomed all the people to the wedding of not Joe and Judy - but “Jew and Jody.”  Well, that broke the tension real fast. To make matters worse, I did it again at the reception. A few weeks ago, I got my annual Christmas card from “Jew and Jody.”  I promise you; they’ll never forget me!
  
  More seriously, our first reading is from the magnificent prophet Isaiah. It sees the Jewish people finally coming home to Jerusalem after their long exile in Babylon. God says to them, “As a young man marries a virgin, your Builder shall marry you.” ‘The Builder,’ the architect of all creation, will marry this nation.  This God will not be a distant god.  And the wine will flow.
  
  We love good wine. It makes us joyful. In the Bible wine is always a symbol of happiness, a sign of intoxication with the divine life. In our faith it’s the perfect symbol of the life of God in us.  What joy when we experience the divine life! 
  
  Fast forward to the wedding at Cana where they’ve run out of wine. Mary notices this and speaks for the first time in John’s Gospel.  “They have no wine.” She’s certainly speaking of a practical problem.  But with St. John there’s always a deeper level.  Mary is reflecting on what’s happened to God’s people.  She’s saying that the people no longer have that intoxicating spirit of God living in them.  It’s like they’ve run out of the divine life.  Somehow, there’s been not a marriage, but a divorce between God and the people. At a deeper level this is what “having no wine” means. What’s Mary asking for? An outpouring of new grace.
  
  Jesus responds that his “hour has not yet come.”  But He’s being directed by his mother and her next line is very telling.  And they are her last words in this Gospel. “Do whatever He tells you.”  Do you want life?  Do whatever Jesus tells you.
  
  In saying that to the waiters she’s doing what every great prophet does.  She’s the voice of all the prophets, who over the centuries, called Israel to be faithful. “If you want life, do whatever God tells you.” Live as God asks and we’ll find the wine doesn’t run out. The life for which we’ve been hoping will overflow.
  
  You see, when we’re ‘hooked up’ to the divine life, when we’re married to God, the good life never runs out.  It’s plentiful.
  
  Jesus celebrated his first miracle at the wedding feast of Cana. And it’s deeply spiritual.  He came to give us God’s life. All we must do is join the great party. The joy of knowing God is a wine that changes our thirsty human nature into the invigorating drink of the supernatural life. Jesus changes water to wine, but more importantly for us: he changes discouragement to hope and doubt to faith.

• Download the Homily

  • Homily for January 16th