The Signs Revealed in Cana of Galilee, Second Sunday (C), January 16, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Chapel of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
January 16, 2022
Is 62:1-5, Ps 96, 1 Cor 12:4-11, Jn 2:1-11

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• Today we participate liturgically in the most famous wedding of all time, because of who was on the guest list. We meditate on this scene every Thursday as we pray the second Luminous Mystery of the Holy Rosary. Often we pray about what it reveals about the sacrament of marriage and how Jesus takes the “water” of the institution of marriage from the beginning with Adam and Eve and raised it to the “wine” of a sacramental encounter with him: how Christ brings the marriage between a Christian man and woman into the marriage between him and the Church in fulfillment of what Isaiah prophesied with words we ponder every Christmas that are repeated in today’s first reading: “As a young man marries a virgin, your Builder shall marry you, and as a Bridegroom rejoices in his bride, so shall your God rejoice in you.” The wedding feast of Cana is a revelation not merely of Jesus’ miraculous power, but his spousal love, the nuptial intention of his incarnation — even though none, except Mary, would have caught it at the time. Saint John tells us that what happened in Cana was the first of Jesus’ “signs” by which his disciples began to believe in him, the first public miracle that pointed to something else. I’d like to examine together how the miracle is a sign that reveals something about the Blessed Mother, something key about Jesus beyond his power and something about what our response is meant to be to Jesus and his mother.
• First, this scene reveals a beautiful characteristic of the love of the Blessed Mother. We pray throughout Advent until the Presentation the beautiful Marian hymn Alma Redemptoris Mater in which we turn to her as one who always hastens to the aid of her fallen sons and daughters who are striving to get up and continue the journey. In Cana she shows us how as a loving mother she hastens to our aid before we even now we need that aid.
• Ancient Jewish wedding celebrations, like the one taking place in Cana, would last eight days. There were three sumptuous meals a day. Wine was served throughout the octave. It was the generally the happiest celebration in the life of Jews, which is why Jesus often returned to the image of a wedding banquet to describe the joys of heaven. We can only imagine how embarrassing it would be today if, at a wedding reception, the banquet hall ran out of food or beverages early in the celebration. Even though most people would sympathize with the couple and blame the banquet facility, it would still be terribly embarrassing for the family. In the ancient world, it would be incalculably more so, because the family itself threw the reception. If they ran out of supplies, especially with days to go during the reception, it would be an embarrassment that likely would never be forgotten.
• Mary was at the wedding and noticed the impending catastrophe. Before the wine steward caught on to the predicament, before the couple did, before even the mother of the bride had noticed, Mary saw the problem. The reason why there was no wine left was probably because too many were drinking so much that they just weren’t paying attention. Mary’s sober love made her notice the details that others were missing. To remedy the problem, she went to her son. She didn’t twist his arm. She didn’t try to persuade him that, even though it wasn’t his “hour” for working public miracles (because that would inexorably precipitate the Cross), he should act. She simply said, “They have no wine!,” confident that her Son, even though he didn’t think the timing was appropriate, would out of merciful love miraculously intervene.
• This episode, I think, reveals two things about Mary’s merciful intercession:
  • Mary seeks to solve problems by bringing them to her divine Son. Her maternal love is inextricably bound to her Son’s mercy. Some of our Protestant brothers and sisters say that Catholics shouldn’t pray to Mary because, as St. Paul writes, Christ is our sole mediator between God and man (1 Tim 2:5). They say we should eliminate the “middle woman” and bring all our needs directly to the Lord. Well, there’s obviously nothing wrong with praying directly to Jesus, but at the same time, Mary’s intercession is no threat to Christ’s power; in fact, it reveals Christ’s power, because it depends entirely on Christ’s power. Mary cannot work miracles on her own. Any time she acts, she acts through her Son. When we pray to her, we ask her to bring our needs to her Son, just like she brought the need of the couple in Cana.
  • Second, Mary often acts, like she did in Cana, before we even know we have a problem. I have every confidence that she is looking down on all of us with maternal love and similarly interceding for us with her Son before we even know we have an issue. She recognizes that one of us may have a really tough week and she’s interceding for the help we’ll need to cope. She foresees some of us will have some severe temptations and she springs into action. She sees that some of us may be battling health difficulties and she’s getting involved before we even ask her. She grasps that one of us will need a good confession, and she’s intervening for a priest to be there. Her mercy looks out and acts out of love before we’re often aware that we need mercy. Mary’s maternal interaction is something that we should be ever more grateful for and dependent on!
• Beyond the epiphany of Mary’s merciful intercession, the miracle at the wedding of Cana also is a sign of something stunning about the way Christ exercises his spousal love and power. He acts at his mother’s behest and anticipates the time of his own suffering to take away our sins. But he acts in a particular way. Christ was and is the creator of the Universe. He formed the oceans with just a word. He could have easily filled those six empty thirty-gallon water jugs with wine with a thought, or a syllable, or a snap of his fingers. He could have in an instant created thousands of such jugs on the spot filled with wine or champagne or anything he wanted. But he didn’t act that way. Instead he turned to the servants there and said, “Fill the jars with water.” He wanted to involve them in his miracle. That’s the way he normally chooses to act. We see the same modus operandi  later with the miraculous feeding of the five thousand men (Jn 6). He who had created all the fruit and vegetables, all the beasts wild and tame, all the fish of the sea, could have easily fed the crowd by creating out of nothing a sumptuous meal. But he didn’t. He asked his disciples what they had to feed the crowd, and all they had were the five loaves and two fish that a young boy was offering. Jesus took that meager gift and multiplied it to feed everyone. We see this same principle at work in the celebration of the Eucharist. Jesus could have easily established the Eucharist to be celebrated with the raw materials of grain and grapes he created and have turned those elements into his sacred body and blood. But he didn’t. He started with bread and wine, because he wanted to incorporate us into this greatest miracle of all. During the offertory, the priest recalls this cooperation, praying, “Blessed are you, Lord God of all Creation, for through your goodness we have this bread to offer, fruit of the earth and the work of human hands” and later, “through your goodness we have this wine to offer, fruit of the vine and the work of human hands.” These — God’s goodness and the human contribution together — the priest prays “will become for us the Bread of life … [and] our spiritual drink.” The central point is that Christ could do it all; he certainly doesn’t need us. But he wants to include us in his saving work. And this is a great part of his mercy: he who created us without our consent, as St. Augustine once said, doesn’t want to save us without our consent, and doesn’t want to save others without our cooperation.
• The third thing that Jesus’ sign of Cana in Galilee reveals is how we’re supposed to respond to this merciful inclusion in his saving work. St. John tells us simply that when the servants receive Mary’s instruction to do whatever Jesus told them and Jesus’ imperative to fill the jars with water, “they filled them to the brim.” Those five words conceal an awful lot of effort. There were no ancient hoses tied to ancient water pipes to fill the jars up. The only place they could get water to fill them was the central well in Cana. Because the jars were made of stone, they would have been extremely heaven to carry to the well; filled with 30 gallons of water, which would weigh another 250 pounds (one gallon = 8.35 lbs), they would have been impossible to bring back. The only way they could have been filled would have been by taking little leather or ceramic water containers back and forth to the well.  If we imagine that there were five servants, each with a hefty two gallon container in each hand, it would have meant that they would have had to have made 9 trips back and forth to the Cana well to get enough water. That would have been grueling exercise even for those who were fit and strong. Yet they filled the 30 gallon water jars not to 75 percent or even 90 percent but to the brim. They zealously did their part and Jesus used their efforts as the raw material for his incredible miracle. How much wine are we talking about? We’re used to looking at wine in wine bottles, which are 750 milliliters. There are 3.8 liters in a gallon. 180 gallons times 3.8 liters per gallon is 684 liters; poured in 750 milliliter bottles, that means Jesus made 912 bottles of great wine, the equivalent of 76 cases. No wedding, even for eight days, could ever consume that much. But just like Jesus worked the miracle of the multiplication of five loves and two loaves and left 12 wicker baskets full of fragments, one for each of the apostles, so Jesus worked this miracle as a sign of what he himself does when we cooperate. In response to the servants’ generosity, his generosity is even greater. That’s something that should inspire us to be just as enthusiastic and zealous in our correspondence to the Lord’s including us in his saving plan as they were in Cana. Not only are we called to drink the “best wine” of all, flowing from his open side, but also to help others become inebriated by that same divine wine.
• In the second reading today, St. Paul reminds us the Holy Spirit provides God’s people with a variety of gifts to help in the mission Christ has given us to complete his saving work with the same zeal as the servants in Cana. St. Paul lists several of these “gifts,” “services” and “activities”:  the ability to preach the Gospel, to understand it, to respond with faith, to work miracles, to heal, and to discern. He doesn’t mean to give an exhaustive list, but to point toward three truths:
  • First the Holy Spirit “gives to each one individually.” Every one of us has received gifts from God; none of us was skipped in line when the Holy Spirit was handing out talents.
  • Second, we receive these gifts “as the Spirit chooses.” We shouldn’t be jealous that we can’t do everything as easily or as well as others can do, or even do it at all. God has given us individually our own talents, talents that he hasn’t given to everyone else, according to a choice of his divine wisdom, and this is all part of his plan.
  • Third, St. Paul tells us what the purpose is of these gifts of the Spirit: “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” Our gifts are not for ourselves. They’re not to make us individually rich or famous. They’ve been given to make God known and loved. They’ve been bestowed to increase his glory and thereby increase our own as his beloved sons and daughters. We’ve received them so that, with Christ, we may bring them to the wedding feast on earth and in heaven. Are we using those gifts for God with the same passion that the servants did in Cana? They were all given the gift of a hardworking and enthusiastic character, and they used it for God. Today we ask the Holy Spirit to help us to see anew what our gifts are and to give us his help so that we might use them for building up the Church as Christ’s Bride in response to his spousal mission.
• As we come to Mass today, we know that Mary is praying for each of us to do whatever her Son tells us. It’s at Mass that Jesus seeks to strengthen us for that task not by turning water into great wine for an eight-day feast, but turning bread and wine in to his own Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, to help us, and through us others, to come to the eternal Banquet. The miracle at the wedding feast of Cana was a prelude to this greatest miracle of all. We follow Mary’s command to do whatever Christ tells us by doing this in memory of him. And we come here seeking to allow him to fill us to the brim with his grace and love, so that being so transformed by this spousal union with him, we made go out to bring everyone to the feast that will last into eternity.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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