1
2nd.
Sunday of Year 2022 (C)
(Isaiah
62:1-5; 1st.
Corinthians 12: 4-11; St. John’s Gospel 2:1-11)
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But what about John, the young
boy in the midst of such pre-destined and mature men? Perhaps we may
be allowed, just for the very joy and beauty of it, to try to gain
some appreciation and possible understanding of the reason for and
purpose of Jesus’ choice of John.
Mature men are – by
definition -- already formed in their personality and manhood to a
large measure, even though subsequently they become fully committed
and truly loving disciples. John, however, was not fully mature in
such ways: he was still receptive of and impressionable under human
influence but, obviously, much more so when in close proximity with
Jesus’ divinely human Personality. St. John’s Gospel offers us
therefore -- quite uniquely – an intimacy of access to Jesus
Himself whereby we are invited, to lose something of ourselves and
experience Jesus as it were from the inside: to sympathetically
intuit something of His Personality, and whole-heartedly love His
very Self, along with John. And today’s Gospel reading is an
excellent example of John’s opening up of Jesus for us in that way.
A wedding was taking place in
Cana to which Mary (and Jesus? and His new disciples??) had been
invited. During the course of the celebrations we are told:
The wine ran short and
the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.”
Obviously -- judging from
Jesus’ reply -- Mary was not just ‘concerned’ about the lack of
wine, for she was expecting, or at least hoping, that Jesus might be
able to do something about it.
As you can appreciate, Jesus
was surprised at His mother’s concern; or perhaps better, quite
puzzled at her attempt to involve Him in the matter.
Jesus said to her,
“Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come.”
Mary, however, was not to be
put off:
His mother said to the
servers, “Do whatever He tells you.”
That surely is moral pressure:
for Mary – known to all as Jesus’ very mother – publicly, even
though you might say, in a confidential way, advises the servants
(who will most certainly talk!) to be ready to do whatever Jesus
might tell them. Jesus had not intended to tell them to do anything,
but now those servants were looking to Him, waiting for Him, to say
something, to do something!! So there we are now ourselves, having
been made aware of a dilemma Jesus was experiencing within His very
own and very human Self!
When, as a young man
having just been officially recognized as a male adult responsible
before the Law with regard to its obligations and duties, Jesus had
refused to apologize for what Mary thought had been a wrong done to
Joseph and herself. Now, having been confessed before John by the
voice of His Father from heaven, and having entered upon His public
ministry by vanquishing the Devil in his desert lair, the bond of
supremely cherished love and sovereign obedience between Jesus and
His heavenly Father -- manifested and asserted as a very young man
all those years ago -- was never at any risk of now being made
contingent upon, or adapted to conform with, merely human standards
or expectations, not even those of His mother Mary.
Let us therefore, most humbly
watch and wait in order to appreciate and learn from every single
word, even the very least, or from any of His gestures; above all
indeed, let us allow for and learn from His silences and His perhaps,
most intimate, prayer.
Jesus was not concerned about
the couple’s shortage of wine, that is, He had no intention
whatsoever of using powers given Him by His Father for anything but
His Father’s purposes, Woman how does your concern affect Me?
However, though Jesus was not
much embarrassed by Mary’s concern as such, He was nevertheless
puzzled by her subsequent actions:
His mother said to the
servers, “Do whatever He tells you.”
How could she, preaching
obedience to the servants ‘Do whatever He tells you’, herself be
so wilfully insistent about what she wanted Him to do? She had
never behaved in this way before, and that, as I said, was puzzling
for Jesus. John tells us nothing, and that nothingness is one of
those silences of Jesus I just mentioned that we should carefully
attend to, for when Jesus was puzzled He would turn to but One, His
Father.
Jesus was always, literally
always and most intently, aware of and responsive to His Father’s
will; and just as all those years ago, though in no way apologizing
for remaining behind in Jerusalem, He had nevertheless returned home
with Mary and Joseph and, through all the intervening years been obedient
to them, so now, Jesus learned from His Father that, by embracing His
mother Mary’s concern for the young couple and their guests, He,
Jesus, was being offered the opportunity to use, most appropriately,
divine power for truly divine purposes evoking the ultimate
wedding feast of all in heaven.
The heavenly Father never
forgot Mary’s Calvary-like self-sacrifice at the Annunciation and
He always tempered any apparent ‘difficulties’ between His
beloved Son’s supreme love for Himself and His supreme appreciation
of His mother. Here Mary’s concerns for the couple were merely
incidental to the truly divine conciliation the Father was about to
work. The Father wanted His Son-made-Man, now about to set out on His
Messianic work, to begin it with both His heavenly Father's and His earthly mother’s blessing; and so He
made Mary’s ‘concern’ the apparent ‘cause’ of the blessing
He planned: and because she, through such concern, would thus ‘cause’
her Son to work His first miracle as Messiah, that wonderful
privilege would serve most fittingly as her blessing upon her Son’s
subsequent life’s work. It would be totally
divine, even symbolically, for there would be more wine, better wine,
than Mary could ever have conceived of for the newly-wed’s; and it
would be a miracle rejoicing Jesus’ most Sacred Heart to its
fullest human extent while causing Him supreme and most sublime
delight in His Father’s resultant glory as a foreshadowing of the
divine and heavenly banquet of the family of God, gathered together
by the Spirit in the name of Jesus at the table, and before the
Person, of the Father of all.
Now there were six stone
water jars there for Jewish ceremonial washings, each holding twenty
to thirty gallons. Jesus told them, “Fill the jars with water.”
So they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, “Draw some
out now and take it to the headwaiter.” So they took it. And when
the headwaiter tasted the water that had become wine, without knowing
where it came from (although the servers who had drawn the water
knew), the headwaiter called the bridegroom and said to him,
“Everyone serves good wine first, and then when people have drunk
freely, an inferior one; but you have kept the good wine until now.”
Dear People of God, you have
not been taught any particular doctrine of Catholic divinity (as Pope
Benedict did so beautifully) nor exhorted to any particular Catholic
moral attitude or practice (as Pope Francis does so diligently)
because ultimately, whatever we think, whatever we profess or do,
will only bear fruit to the extent in which it is penetrated by our
personal and humble experience of and response to Jesus Himself as
revealed to us by His own Divine Words in the Scriptures and
opened-up for us by His own Most Holy Spirit. Many disciples they too desirous to know
facts, to have information, to be able to answer too many questions,
ABOUT JESUS, especially with other people in view; whereas
what is supremely necessary and uniquely fulfilling is personal
knowledge OF, love FOR, intimacy and fullness of
satisfaction WITH, adherence and commitment TO Jesus
alone, our Lord and Saviour indeed, but also your and my Life, my and your Love.
I do not tell you that I
will ask the Father for you. For the Father Himself loves you,
because you have loved Me and have come to believe that I came from
God. I came from the Father and have come into the world. Now I am
leaving the world and going back to the Father. (John 16:
26-28)
