Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
/Dominica II per Annum C
19 January 2025
In the Christmas season we celebrate in faith that our salvation is near because God has wedded Himself to us, His People. He has done so by wedding Himself to us in our flesh. We celebrate that reality in the conception of Jesus (where God first took flesh) and which we observe on the Annunciation each March. And we celebrate that reality finally being made visible at the birth of Jesus at Christmas. Though the Christmas season has ended, we continue celebrating God wedding Himself to us and being made manifest (or visible) by listening today to the story of the wedding feast at Cana.
St. John is doing something different with this story. He is using an earthly event (the wedding at Cana) that has its own meaning as a tool to reveal divine mystery. The Gospel story is clearly not really about the couple who got married in Cana because they barely get a mention. The bride isn’t mentioned at all. And the groom gets only a brief mention toward the end. Another way we conclude that St. John is doing something different with the story is by considering just how much water Jesus turned into wine. Six jars each holding about 20-30 gallons would result in between 120-180 gallons of wine. We are more familiar with bottles of wine, so let’s run the conversion. On average, that many gallons of wine would amount to between 720-1,080 bottles of wine for a wedding feast. I searched around to see how one plans for the amount of wine to have for a wedding party. Some advice is that for a party of 100 people you plan on about 40 bottles of wine, but to be safe you might just round up to four cases of wine, equaling 48 bottles. Using the amount of wine Jesus made and running the conversion numbers, this would imply a wedding party in the small village of Cana involving party attendance of anywhere from 1,500- 2,250 people! Look, I’ve been pastor of some small towns in Oklahoma that can throw some big parties, but that is an unbelievably large number of people in an ancient village, and it is a totally insane amount of wine. And don’t forget, Jesus made that much wine AFTER they had already consumed all the wine the party had planned for! Again, St. John is clearly doing something different by using the story of the wedding at Cana.
In the Bible, the image of a superabundance of wine accompanies descriptions of God’s action in end times to bring about salvation. The Bible uses the image of much wine to describe the celebration of God’s People when He brings about their final salvation. The Prophet Amos writes, “Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, when… “the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it. I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel, … they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine” (Amos 9:13-14). The Prophet Joel writes, “And in that day the mountains shall drip sweet wine” (Joel 3:18).
St. John writes of the signs by which Jesus acts to reveal his glory and to bring about belief, discipleship, and salvation. With all this in mind, we can view St. John’s use of the wedding at Cana as a sign that Jesus is the actual groom being revealed in mystery, for he is God who has wedded Himself to us in our flesh. And following the logic of the imagery, someone else – namely, the Church – is being revealed as the actual bride. You and I as members of the Church form the bride of Christ. Now, don’t get hung up on the standard sex of that imagery. The point is that Jesus is the groom in this relationship who lays down his life, who gives forth his life, to plant in us the seed of eternal life. We, in this relationship, the Church, as bride, can only receive that gift within us and let it grow to full maturity so that we are born into heavenly life.
And still more, it is the Holy Mass that is the foretaste of the wedding feast of God’s nearness to us in His flesh, and the foretaste of that ultimate act of our salvation by which God brings us to the heavenly feast. You should let this imagery form your perception of the Holy Mass and how you relate to it. If we hold on to this imagery we should be impacted by how we prepare for Holy Mass and how we participate in it. It is a common and widespread expectation that one dresses up for, and dresses properly for, a wedding. Ordinary clothes just won’t do for something so important. That should be our attitude for Mass. What if I wore shorts and my favorite sports jersey to say Mass? Outrageous! By the way, the priest dresses in vestments not to communicate an idea that he’s better, but because he is supposed to serve as the icon of the groom and High Priest, Jesus Christ. And, that would be hard to see or imagine of any man if he wore street clothes. No groom would get away with dressing poorly for the wedding feast. But you are the bride in this imagery! The same holds for you. Let that influence how you dress up for Mass. If we are aware of the Mass as a foretaste of the heavenly wedding feast, then some habits come into different focus. We see the need to prepare for Mass. We prepare spiritually by our daily prayer life and frequent confession that prepares us to actually be in a communion of life with Lord before we receive Holy Communion. We prepare by taking time to reflect on the readings before we hear them proclaimed live. Is there a habit of arriving late for Mass and a habit of leaving early, walking out right after receiving Holy Communion? I’m not talking about occasional snafus or emergencies. But is that your habit? Then the need to reform that habit comes into clearer focus when we understand the Holy Mass as the foretaste of the heavenly wedding feast where we should be “all in”. Finally, for all of us here, let the grace of this foretaste help us understand the necessity as Catholics of marrying in a valid marriage in the Catholic Church so that the living of the sacrament of Holy Matrimony becomes a service by which spouses reflect to the world that God has wedded Himself to us, and reveals His glory through married love so that others may believe!