The arrival and institution of the Church

Father Leo Hausmann
The 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
January 19, 2025

The Christmas Season is a season of epiphanies or manifestations in which the Liturgy shows us God’s revelation of Jesus as the Messiah, first to the shepherds, and then to the Magi, King Herod, John the Baptist, and those gathered around John at the Jordan River. 

Now we have entered back into Ordinary Time with the Gospel of the Wedding Feast at Cana where Jesus changes the water into wine and yet another manifestation of Jesus as the Messiah. In the Gospel of John, this is the first of seven signs where Jesus publicly reveals His divine power and glory. 

It is interesting that the Sacred Scripture begins with the wedding feast of Adam and Eve in the Garden in the Book of Genesis, and ends with another wedding in the Book of Revelation, the marriage supper of the Lamb. Throughout the Bible, marriage is the symbol of the covenant relationship between God and His holy chosen people. God is the faithful bridegroom, and humanity is the beloved bride. 

We see this beautifully reflected in today’s first reading, where Isaiah uses the metaphor of spousal love to describe God’s love for Israel. Here, Isaiah predicts God’s salvation of His people and visualizes it as a wedding between God and Jerusalem. 

About six hundred years before the birth of Christ, the Babylonians invaded the Holy Land and Jerusalem, conquering the Jewish nation and exiling many of the Jews to Babylon where they were enslaved for about the next seventy years. After reminding the exiles, who now have returned to Babylon, that their suffering and slavery in Babylon was the just punishment for their disobedience of God, Isaiah gives them the assurance that their God is now wholly with them. 

Through their infidelities, the Chosen People and their land earned the names “Forsaken” and “Desolate.” But God is a faithful partner and offers his bride a vision of restoration. Forgiven and rehabilitated, Israel will be restored to her status as the espoused and beloved of God. Israel, who has been scorned and mocked by the nations, will be called “My Delight” and “Espoused.” God’s fidelity to his people is compared to a husband’s ideal fidelity to his wife. 

Jesus’ miracle of changing water into an abundance of wine, somewhere between 120 to 180 gallons of it, signifies that the day foreseen by Isaiah has arrived with Jesus’ arrival and the institution of his Church. It is this Church that Christ takes for his bride. By our baptism, each of us has been betrothed to Christ as a bride to her bridegroom.  

Anticipating the joy of this wedding, the Psalmist in today’s Responsorial Psalm, urges us, “Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all you lands. Sing to the Lord; bless his name.”  

In the Gospel, when Mary pointed out to Jesus that they have no wine, his response may seem to us as being a bit sharp. He said, “Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come.” 

This, however, is to misunderstand the passage. In that culture using the word woman was roughly equivalent to our word lady or madam. It was the same word Jesus used in addressing Mary from the cross, saying of John, “Woman, behold your Son.” 

Yet, it would not be typical for how a son would address his mother. By addressing her as “woman,” our Lord is linking the Blessed Virgin Mary to Eve. In Genesis, God revealed that the demonic serpent would be defeated by “the seed of the woman. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.”

Jesus’ next words are also easily misunderstood. He asked Mary, “How does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come.” 

The “hour” of Jesus includes the passion, death, resurrection and ascension taken as one great event. This is the whole point of His becoming man and the miracle of the water into wine must be understood in the light of that one great event.

On her part, Mary responds by simply instructing the waiters, “Do whatever he tells you,” which is the same thing she tells each of us. Whatever Jesus tells us, whether it be through the magisterium of the Church, or Sacred Scripture, or prayer or the wisdom of the saints, we need to do. That is the only way to happiness here and eternal life in heaven. The Church uses the account of this miracle to remind us that, by virtue of her position as the Mother of God and our heavenly Mother, Mary’s intercession for us with God has great power. It is wise for us to seek her intercession regularly in our daily life and family life.

The same Jesus, who transformed water into wine at Cana, transforms our gifts of bread and wine into Jesus’ own Body and Blood, soul, and divinity, under the appearances of consecrated bread and wine. He does this in order to give us spiritual nourishment. Let us now turn to the altar hungry and thirsty for his great gift.