Christ The Servant
Catholic Church
Cold Springs, Ontario
Homily Selections
Marriage in Cana
Have you ever noticed how we inspire each other? A few weeks ago Germain delivered a great Homily on the Holy Family. His presentation was modernized to the present and became even more relevant to our day to day living. Germain was inspired by the outstanding pageant that our youth did at Christmas time. I will never forget that pageant either. The expression on my thirty something children's faces when Joseph said "Hurry up Mary" and the three wisemen were creeping around the alcove with flashlight and roadmap was simply priceless!
In writing this Homily on the Wedding in Cana, I am inspired by Germain's style and will try through moderization to make it more relevant to our lives today. But, before I leave Germain's homily on the Holy Family there is something I have been wanting to say for decades and I'm going to jump at this opportunity to say it!
The gospel says that when Mary asked Jesus "Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety"" Jesus replied to his mother " Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my father's house?" Well now, how was Mary supposed to know that? She was not provided with a life compass that told her that Jesus would go missing for three days when he was 12 and they should just be cool about it. It would be fine because he was doing the job he was sent here to do. So, of course Mary and Joseph didn't understand what Jesus was saying to them. And why was Jesus speaking to his mother like that anyhow ? The gospel is silent on whether Mary said anything further, but I'm pretty sure I know what she was thinking. We are told "Then Jesus went down with them and came to Nazareth and was obedient to them" Maybe he was grounded for the rest of his childhood?
OK the wedding in Cana where John tells us that the purpose of what Jesus did was to reveal his glory to the world. The consequence was that his disciples put their faith in him.
What did Jesus first do to reveal his glory to the world?Perform a wonderful healing? No Preach a stunning sermon? No He went round the back of the bar at a wedding and boosted the stocks of best wine--by very generous proportions.
Depending on your taste for fine wine and partygoing you'll find this miracle either very encouraging or rather disconcerting. Why did Jesus choose to reveal his glory to the world in this way? Let's try to tease out some answers to that question.
You might wonder why Jesus would be at a wedding in the first place. Wouldn't he be too busy being holy, playing God somewhere else, to mix with ordinary folks at a social event?
In fact the opposite is true. Jesus learned how to be holy precisely by mixing with ordinary folks..and he taught ordinary folks how to be holy by socializing with them. In our mission statement we define ourselves as "ordinary people, joyously celebrating the opportunity to follow Jesus's radical message of unconditional love and to follow the beatitudes." We are God's people, we really are.
We can assume that Jesus was at the wedding because he was invited. A single man of thirty years old is just the sort of person You'd expect to be invited to a wedding, and you can bet, in the close-knit community he belonged to, there would be a young bridesmaid or friend of the bride who would be watching him closely with interest, hoping he might notice her
We can also assume that Jesus wanted to be there to share the joy and the fun of the occassion with his family and friends.
It's only what you'd expect that God, who took such delight in creating the world and all its people, would delight to be with them on a day of celebration; that God, whose whole being is wrapped up totally in love, would want to share the wonder of a young couple's love by joining in their wedding day.
Now we also know from our own experience that weddings aren't all joy. Jesus knows, just as we do that weddings bring out family tensions as well as family blessings. Jesus knows just as we do that for all the joy of weddings, they can also bring out conflicts, regrets, lonliness and pain.
And Jesus wanted to be at that wedding , fully aware of all of those things so that he could spread his healing love around. Isn't that precisely why he came down from Heaven to earth in the first place?
Now the wine--the wine is something else which tells us Jesus wanted to be there and that he understood the peoples needs. When he quietly snuck behind the bar and somehow transformed ordinary water into finest quality wine, three groups of people benefited.
The partygoers benefited , obviously although they didn't even know what had gone one behind the scenes; The hosts of the party benefited: it saved them so much embarrassment, But it's most probable that Jesus performed this miracle for the sake of the bar staff, the caterers. It may have been their fault stocks ran so low;whatever, they would have got the blame and took the shame when the wine ran out. Jesus saved them from all that. Jesus is one of the workers, the ones who get few thanks and lots of grief from employers and customers alike. We might speculate that this miracle was for them especially. And then there was the abundance of wine.....Jesus didn't just produce any old wine. 'Jesus' wine was the very best quality, sending the toastmaster into confusion, making the drinkers think this was some do they were at, They were involved in something special here.
And Jesus didn't spend any time carefully calculating precisely how much wine was needed to keep the party going to a certain time. No, he got all the empty containers they could find and filled them right up to the brim. Imagine him saying "That should do it" to a blown away bar staff.
This was more than enough. This wasn't just generous. As Rev. John Davies, from whom I have borrowed most of this homily, said "This is a scandelously generous gesture. Which is precisely what Jesus intended it to be. Because after all, isn't the whole thing abouy God coming to earth scandelously generous?"
Jesus chose to reveal his glory not to a temple full of pomous priests or pent up puritans but to a party full of all sorts....isn't that scandelous??
Jesus chose to offer everyone, whoever they were and whatever they were up to , the same sort of new life as he'd injected into that party with that new wine---isn't that generous??
A final great thing about this story is that it invites us to see how Jesus needs us to help share his extravagant glory with others. He needed his mother to prompt him to do it in the first place. And, did you notice how he spoke to her? "Woman, what concern is that to you and me? My hour has not yet come." Apparently Mary knew better. He needed the workers to prepare it all for him. And at the end he had his disciples putting their faith in him so that his glorious, generous work of love could carry on, spread and grow, through them.
We are their successors. And that's why Jesus gives us the gifts of the Spirit. So we can help share his extravagant glory, his love, his compassion and his joy with others.
MORE RECENT HOMILIES
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