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Second Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)

January 19, 2025

Fr. John Colacino C.PP.S.

Introit

Collect

Almighty ever-living God,
who govern all things,
both in heaven and on earth,
mercifully hear the pleading of your people
and bestow your peace on our times.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.

First Reading Is 62:1-5

The Lord says this: 1 “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her vindication shines out like the dawn, and her salvation like a burning torch. 2 “The nations shall see your vindication, and all the kings your glory; and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give. 3 You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. 4 “You shall no more be termed ‘Forsaken,’ and your land shall no more be termed ‘Desolate’; but you shall be called ‘My Delight Is in Her,’ and your land ‘Married’; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married. 5 “For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your builder marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.”

Responsorial Psalm Ps 96:1-2,2-3,7-8,9-10

R/. Proclaim his marvelous deeds to all the nations.

Second Reading 1 Cor 12:4-11 2

There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. 7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8 To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10 to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

Alleluia Cf. 2 Thess 2:14

Gospel Jn 2:1-11

There was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2 Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3 When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” 4 And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” 5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” 6 Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding about a hundred litres. 7 Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 8 He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. 9 When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), 10 the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” 11 Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him. 12 After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother, his brothers, and his disciples; and they remained there a few days.

Catena Nova

Water began to acquire a new color, a new fragrance, a new flavor—all at once it was completely transformed. Of course, this transformation witnessed to the powerful presence of the Creator.... But this sign was not about God’s power over water but God’s power to transform us. Scripture says that this sign at Cana in Galilee was the first that Jesus performed, and so manifested his glory. More important yet, his disciples began to believe in Him. It was not what they saw happening to the water that they believed but that an ordinary human being was the Son of the Most High. Let’s believe this too, and believe it wholeheartedly. He whom we confess to be the Son of Man is also Son of God. We believe not only that he shared our nature but that he had a divine nature. If such is our faith then we should believe as well that his is the power to transform us as completely and wonderfully as he did the water into wine. But we mustn’t only believe. We must act out the transformation. This means living divine-human loving, just as Jesus loved. That is the point of the transformation. It requires too that we share Jesus’ cross, however. Are you longing for this transformation, and will welcome it no matter what the cost? (St. Maximus of Turin)

“The miracle by which our Lord Jesus Christ changed water into wine is not at all astonishing to those who know that God is its author. Indeed, it is exactly the same thing which produced wine in those six jars on that wedding day … and which renews this transformation in the vines each year…. And yet we do not wonder at it because it is repeated every year; custom has caused astonishment to disappear. Yet it is far more worthy of our attention than what took place in the jars filled with water…. If we consider the power enclosed within a single seed of the first species to come, we will discover a great reality there that astounds the observer. But people, otherwise occupied, have become insensible to the works of God, which would daily provide motives for praising the Creator. This is why God reserves to Himself the work of certain unusual wonders, so as to awaken them from their sleepiness and lead them to praise Him (St Augustine of Hippo).

The people who witnessed the transformation of water into wine saw a miracle. But if we look closer, we see a truth about baptism and the life we live when we come forth from its waters. We see one thing become something new and wonderful. We are being transformed day by day, we see a lower reality becoming a higher one. This is the effect of our Second Birth. Just as water became wine so a law-governed life becomes a grace-lead life…. The water in the jars wasn’t lessened in quality but began a new way of existing. Christ doesn’t destroy what existed before Him but raises it up and brings it to fulfillment. (St. Faustus of Riez).

Our Redeemer became our Bridegroom. The bride became exhilarated at the sight of his noble countenance. Under this immense force she loses herself. The less she becomes, the more flows into her. The more loving God is to her, the higher she soars. The more his desire grows, the more extravagant their wedding celebration becomes. The narrower the bed of love becomes, the more intense are the embraces. The sweeter the kisses on the mouth become, the more lovingly they gaze at one another. The greater the distress in which they part, the more he bestows upon her. The more God's praise is spread abroad, the greater her desire becomes (St. Mechthild of Magdeburg).

The purpose of wine is not only to quench thirst, but also to give pleasure and satisfaction and exhilaration. "My cup, how goodly it is, how plenteous!" ....Wine possess a sparkle, a perfume, a vigour, that expands and clears the imagination. Under the form of wine Christ gives us his divine blood. It is no plain and sober drought. It was bought at a great price, at a divinely excessive price…. For our sakes Christ became bread and wine, food and drink. We make bold to eat him and to drink him. This bread gives us solid and substantial strength. This wine bestows courage, joy out of all earthly measure, sweetness, beauty, limitless enlargement and perception. It brings life in intoxicating excess, both to possess and to impart (Romano Guardini).

The banquet [of Cana] is not only a banquet, but it is a wedding banquet, and the guests also constitute the bride. That is, the rejoicing is not only that of guests, but of one being married, and here is where the image of heaven is, without any shame, marital. The wedding which is celebrated includes the completely loving interpenetration of bride and groom, in a relationship which makes of them one thing, a relation of infinitely creative fecundity, freed, of course, from all the tensions, rivalries and complications which surround and diminish our experience and living-out of things erotic…. Since we are formed from within entirely by the Other who has called us into existence, since “the other is consubstantial with the consciousness of the ‘self,'” at the end we will be entirely possessed by the God who possesses pacifically in an interchange that is ever more fecund and creative. We will be married participants, all our desires fulfilled, in that effervescent creative vitality (James Alison).

How can one celebrate a wedding feast and make merry without what the prophets indicated as a typical element of the messianic banquet? Water is necessary for life but wine expresses the abundance of a banquet and the joy of a feast. This wedding feast was short of wine, the newlyweds are ashamed of this. But just imagine ending a wedding feast drinking tea, it would be a shame. Wine is necessary for a feast. By transforming into wine the water of the jars used “for the Jewish rites of purification” (Jn 2:6), Jesus preforms an eloquent sign – He transforms the Law of Moses into the Gospel, bearer of joy. As John states elsewhere: “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (1:17). Sometimes, even our best, beautiful dreams, our hard work and troubles – all go to nothing. Great works demand making sacrifices but sometimes we reach a wall. Let us pray that we – like Mary – know how to humbly show this situation to Jesus and that we strongly believe that even out of the greatest failure, He is able to produce the most unexpected good (Pope Francis).

Homily

Today the Bridegroom claims his bride, the Church, since Christ has washed her sins away in Jordan’s waters; the Magi hasten with their gifts to the royal wedding; and the wedding guests rejoice, for Christ has changed water into wine, alleluia. (Liturgy of the Hours; Mooring Prayer; Epiphany). Thus sang one of the antiphons at Morning Prayer on the feast of the Epiphany. But it's only every three years, in Year C of the liturgical cycle, that the third manifestation of the Lord is celebrated following the feast of the Lord's baptism. Why is a mystery to me since in these early weeks of Ordinary Time the liturgy turns our attention naturally to the beginning of Christ's public ministry. And what better text than today's gospel when Jesus performed the beginning of his signs at Cana in Galilee and so revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him (G)?

But far more than a fitting chronology, this third epiphany has always been mined for its deeper significance as befits the Gospel of John, whose author is always after the inner meanings that lay beneath outward appearances. The evangelist frequently operates on two levels, what might be called the literal and the mystical. And the phrase that interests me for its deeper significance is Jesus' response to his mother’s statement, They have no wine. (G)

Translators have different ways of rendering his response to Mary's concern for the bride and groom not to mention the wedding coordinator! In literal Greek — “What to me and to you, woman?” — is much like our translation, "Woman, how does your concern affect me?" (G).

Now if the literal sense were all John meant — “Forget it, mother, it’s not my affair nor is it the right time” — well, the rest of the story would not follow, would it? Yet it does and in spectacular fashion. So does the response have a secondary, mystical, meaning? I believe it does.

It seems to me the phrase, given the whole sweep of the story, means something like, “How does your request show our mutual association?" And I say this because the only other time “the Woman” appears in the Gospel is at the cross when his “hour” had finally come — the hour when the “disciple whom Jesus loved” receives her as his mother and she her son. The two accounts appear as bookends of sorts. For the birth pangs of a new humanity required a maternal participant which is one meaning of the complex symbolism of the blood and water that flowed from the pierced side of the Crucified. Cana, as it were, introduces the mother of Jesus as this Woman.

And the fact she is unnamed — nothing unusual at the literal level as "Woman" would be a normal form of address in a public setting — also has a deeper meaning as it hearkens back to another yet-unnamed "woman" in the Garden of Eden. St. Irenaeus was the first to make the connection around the year 180 when he wrote, "As Eve was seduced into disobedience to God, so Mary was persuaded into obedience to God; thus the Virgin Mary became the advocate of the virgin Eve" (Adversus haereses, Book V).

And we might add how she, in whose womb the nuptials between divinity and humanity were solemnized, does not offer forbidden fruit to the Second Adam, but leads him instead to transform water into fruit of the vine in abundance — foreshadowing Wine of the Eucharist he will serve as Bridegroom of the church, his bride.

You might recall the controversy that erupted at the summer Olympics in Paris when during the opening ceremony a tableau featured a a drunken bacchanal presided over by the god of wine, Dionysius, which some thought was a parody of DaVinci's Last Supper. The ceremony's director, however, claimed it was inspired instead by Jan van Bijlert's The Feast of God. Outrage ensued over the perceived blasphemy. But whatever the intent, I sometimes think Christians lose an opportunity when such things occur. For example, rather than accuse, those offended might instead have spoken of the real feast of God in which we drink, not ordinary wine, however fine the vintage, but the Blood of Christ, the truly good wine kept until now (cf. G).

And how in the prayer attributed to St. Ignatius of Loyola, the Anima Christi, we invoke that Blood, asking it to "inebriate me" — so that, in the words of St. Catherine of Siena, the mystic of the Precious Blood, “we will pass through the narrow gate drunk, as it were, with the blood of the spotless Lamb, dressed in charity for [our] neighbors and bathed in the blood of Christ crucified” (Dialogue, §82) for "this is the blood that warms, that drives out all chill, clears the voice of the one who drinks it, and gladdens heart and soul. For this blood is shed with the fire of divine charity. It so warms us that out we come from our very selves — and from that point on, we cannot see ourselves selfishly, but only for God, and we see God for God, and we see our neighbors for God. (Letter 6). And thereby participate worthily in these mysteries (Prayer over the Offerings). Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Intercessions (Joe Milner; The Sunday Website)

For the Church: that inspired Mary’s words, we may become better disciples by doing all that God asks of us.

For all couples: that they may be channels of God’s love to one another and signs of God’s presence in society.

For the unity of all Christians: that God will heal the wounds in the body of Christ and help us to give common witness to God through prayer and acts of loving compassion.

For healing of the divisions within the human family: that racism, sexism, and prejudice may cease and that each person may be welcomed with dignity and respect.

For all who work for social and racial justice in our society: that they may faithfully give witness to the Good News that all people are daughters and sons of God.

For an end to violence in families, amongst neighbors, and in our city streets: that God will turn hearts from violence and help all people to work together to build the City of God.

For all who are ill: that God will bring healing to all who are sick, and give strength to all healthcare workers

For all who are recovering from natural disasters, especially in Los Angeles: that God will protect them, help them rebuild their lives, and touch the hearts of many to assist them

For our country: that God will heal the divisions and animosity that exists, help leaders to work together to address the issues of those who are suffering, and help us to better listen to one another.

For peace: that God will turn hearts from warfare and violence and help the human family address the needs for food, medicine, and education.

God of wonders, at Cana in Galilee you revealed your glory in Jesus Christ and summoned all humanity to life in him. Show to your people gathered on this day your transforming power and give us a foretaste of the wine you keep for the age to come. We make our prayer through Christ our Lord. Amen (ICEL; 1998).

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