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From the Pastor’s Desk
Although we are in the “C cycle” of the Lectionary for Sunday Mass which means that the Gospel of Saint Luke is the featured Gospel for the year, the first Sunday after the Christmas season, the Church always proclaims from the Gospel of Saint John. Today we get the wonderful story of the Wedding Feast at Cana in which we hear Mary say, Do whatever he tells you (Jn 2:5).
The previous two Sundays, the Church has celebrated the visit of the Magi and Jesus’ Baptism in the River Jordan. Along with the Miracle at Cana, early Christians reveled in these three manifestations of God breaking into our world in the Mystery of the Incarnation. So, this year, thanks to the Lectionary, we can contemplate each of these epiphanies, or manifestations, of the God-with-us.
Our patron, Augustine of Hippo, preaching on today’s Gospel once said:
The Lord was invited and came to a wedding. Is it any wonder that he who came to that house for a wedding came to this world for a wedding? … Therefore he has a bride here whom he has redeemed by his blood and to whom he has given the Holy Spirit as a pledge. He wrested her from enslavement to evil, he died for her sins. He arose again for her justification.
What is the “wedding “that Jesus came “to this world for” to which Augustine is referring? It is for nothing less than the union of the Divine and the human. We are, as Saint Paul writes, “his Bride, the Church.” This, then, is not only the pledge of Divine Love, but it is the revelation of our salvation. Just as Jesus, that day at Cana of Galilee, freed the couple from embarrassment, so he frees us from the embarrassment of our sins by his “Love poured out as blood” upon the Cross. This holy Mystery we are invited to enter into at every Mass. How can anyone remain away from partaking in such a wondrous Mystery of Love?
Love,
Father Tom