SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (2025)

SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (2025)

Readings:

Isaiah 62:1-5

Psalms 96:1-3, 7-10

1 Corinthians 12:4-11

John 2:1-12

In these weeks between the end of the Christmas season and the beginning of Lent, we have a chance as Catholic Christians to re-familiarize ourselves with who the person of Jesus is, and what He expects of us.  Luke’s gospel, primarily read during the Ordinary weeks of Year C, gave us a beautiful picture of Jesus’ birth, and Matthew gave us a wonderful glimpse of Jesus’ manifestation to the Gentile kings.  Today’s gospel from John presents to us Jesus’ first miracle (what John calls “signs”), and the context is a wedding feast.  The story is beautiful in its ordinariness.  Before, and perhaps during, Jesus’ public ministry, the Holiest of Families did what ordinary families did – they celebrated the weddings of their neighbors and relatives, and those celebrations were big deals, lasting at times several days.

At this particular wedding feast Mary noticed that the bride and groom were about to run out of wine, something that would be a source of embarrassment.  Surely by the time Jesus was a young adult, and even before Jesus began His public ministry, Mary understood that there was something special about this young man, and in her heart she knew that Jesus could spare this newly married couple the embarrassment of running out of wine.  Mary boldly approaches Jesus, and without nagging simply says to Him, “they have no [more] wine.”  With a slight bit of impatience which every child can understand, Jesus answers her: “Woman, how does your concern affect me?, (as if to say, ‘I am off the clock right now’).  My hour has not yet come.”  This clearly wasn’t the most auspicious way to begin His public ministry.  The subtlety of what happens next largely protects Jesus from a public declaration of His divinity, although it points to the grand respect Jesus had for His mother, as well as the newly married couple.  Mary surely had an inkling that her son would take care of this problem, telling the servants, “Do whatever He tells you.”

Large stone water jars used for the ceremonial cleansings of the Old Law, will be quietly transformed by John’s account as the prelude to a very public ministry.  With very little fanfare, Jesus orders the jars to be filled with water “to the brim.”  Jesus then asks the waiters to draw some ‘water’ out and take it to the head waiter, who proclaims that not only has it become wine, but it has become the very best of wines, better than what the young couple were originally serving.  Only the waiters knew that the miraculous transformation had something to do with Jesus who was in charge.  John’s commentary on the event  was “Jesus did this as the beginning of His signs (miracles) in Cana in Galilee and so revealed His glory, and His disciples began to believe in Him.”  In His actions, Jesus shows He is leaving the ‘old Law’ behind and fulfilling it with something unheard of.  The very next verses of John will describe the cleansing of the Temple, a much bolder indication of what is to come.

Mary’s words to the waiters echo the very voice of God spoken to Jesus: “Listen to Him.”  Indeed, the gospels were written so that some of the words that Jesus uttered in His public ministry might be heard by us some two-thousand years after the fact.  But Mary’s words are more direct, for it is not a matter of listening or reading the words of Jesus, it is a matter of doingthe words of Jesus.  There should be no permanent embarrassment when we fail to do what Jesus has taught us should be done.  But Mary’s words need to be followed with more than a faint-hearted attempt to do God’s will.  Mary’s words, respected by the waiters, brought the proper joy and peace to the wedding celebration.  Doing whatever Jesus has shared with us, whether in our hearts or in the pages of Scripture, will likewise bring joy and peace to our lives, and assure us of the acclaim “well done good and faithful servant, now enter into the joys of God’s kingdom.”