Homily

Jesus makes us look at the ordinary so we can draw out the extraordinary

comshalom

A homily from Father Cristiano Pinheiro – January 19th, 2025 – Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, C
Isaiah 62:1-5; Psalm 96; 1 Corinthians 12:4-11; John 2:1-11

Today, we dive into the story of a wedding feast. Actually, all the readings in today’s Mass will use a ‘spousal’ language; a ‘spousal’ imagery. The prophet Isaiah just breaks into song: ‘As a young man marries a virgin, your Builder (your God) shall marry you.’

It’s such a powerful way to speak, right? Of course, God, our ‘Builder’, isn’t going to marry us in the same way a husband and wife do. But in our human language, the most beautiful and perfect way to describe this deep union that God wants to establish with us—the intensity of His commitment to us—is through the image of a marriage, (of) a wedding.

Marriage is the sacrament where ‘the two become one’, where there’s no longer just “mine” or “yours,” but only “ours.” That’s what marriage is meant to be. And that’s how deep God wants to engrave and graft His Love and Mercy within our hearts. The Book of Song of Songs puts it perfectly: ‘My Beloved (my Lover) is mine and I am His.’

St. John of the Cross, a great mystic, doctor of the Church, and saint, speaking about our soul’s relationship with God, says that God’s love changes the beloved into the Lover. It’s such an intimate, deep union that the beloved is united as one with the Lover.

And the thing is, this union with God, this sort of spiritual matrimony, carries a special mark of Mercy. It’s like: God doesn’t take us because we’re His equals or on His level, but He chooses to love us in our sinfulness and smallness. It seems like God’s love has a kind of gravity, pulling Him downward as He (literally) falls in love with us in our weakness.

God is the kind of Spouse who, when He sees us in trouble, does whatever it takes to save us, win us back, and forgive us. You can see this all over the Bible—in the words of just about every prophet of Israel and in so many other passages. Actually, there are countless expressions of this ‘spousal and merciful way’ that God has / of loving us!

An example of this is in today’s First Reading, when the prophet Isaiah declares: ‘No more shall people call you ‘Forsaken’, or your land ‘Desolate’, but you shall be called ‘My Delight’, and your land ‘Espoused.’ For the Lord delights in you and makes your land his spouse.’ This Spousal Love doesn’t get any more straightforward or clear than that.

This is God’s passionate, fervent, enamored love for us. Even when—and especially when —we’re in dire straits, we can see the special place we hold in His Heart. He delights in us and completes what we lack by uniting Himself with us!

We see this spousal echo in the very life of the Church, just as we read in the Second Reading: St. Paul uses the image of a multi-gifted (multi-talented) Church, where each person has spiritual gifts that complement one another. One single person cannot be the owner of all gifts. But united in the same Spirit, what’s mine is yours, what’s yours is mine.

So, this spousal language and imagery highlight something very essential about us. No matter what our specific vocation or mission may be, we all fulfill our existence in a ‘spousal’ kind of love, fully embracing God, diving all the way in, as He Himself is ‘all in’ when it comes to us. And this union bears spiritual fruits, manifold gifts!

This Spousal Love breaks down all isolation. We’re no longer forsaken or desolate, as Isaiah declared, we have God and the community. We are surrounded by a Divine and Human Love that makes us all children, brothers, sisters, spouses, fathers, and mothers.

And, finally, we come to this wedding in Cana, where the Mother of Jesus was invited. But unfortunately, that celebration takes a bad turn—much like our lives sometimes do. / We’re called to spousal love, to beauty, to a wedding feast, to a celebration… but… we run out of wine! Sometimes, the vitality, the joy of Love within us runs short, or runs dry.

We find ourselves in a state of blandness, flatness, mediocrity. Life, which is meant to be a celebration—fragrant, vibrant, exhilarating—somehow becomes colorless, tasteless… just like water. The Gospel never fails to show how deeply God knows our hearts and our existential struggles. It’s true that, often, we see things in our lives slipping into banality!

And this ‘banality’ or mediocrity creeps into marriages, family life, missionary work, community life, job, priestly life… it seeps into so many of our human and Christian experiences. None of us are immune to this. So, in the face of everything we go through, Mary, with a mother’s heart, says to Jesus about us: “They have no (more) wine!”

Mary is totally tuned in to everything going on around her, which is why she intercedes for us. And she draws something out of Jesus’ heart that, at first, didn’t seem to be the right time for Him to give. A quick side note here: how important it is to have a special place for Mary in our lives. She knows our needs and intercedes on our behalf!

She talks with Jesus about the timing of our salvation, and makes Him bring forward what was meant for later. And by the way, this is the virtue of hope—it draws into the present what belongs to the future. That’s why Mary is the Mother of Hope. She knows that whatever Jesus has in store, He can give. So she says: “Do whatever He tells you.”

This is the secret to all the miracles we need: do the simple things He’s about to tell you to do! Over there are six stone water jars that were supposed to be full, as the Jewish purification rituals prescribed! But they weren’t. Maybe, the wedding feast was going poorly and felt off at that point because the everyday life of the people in that house was being neglected. The simple expressions of love and faithfulness had been compromised!

When we overlook the ordinary, the everyday stuff, our faith wavers, weakens, starts to slip. It’s not the big things that usually cause our faith to collapse—it’s the small ones. A big mistake, a big sin doesn’t just come out of nowhere; but it’s the result of a long series of small, careless, day-to-day choices. A great love is made of (built on) daily love!

So, Jesus makes us look at the ordinary so we can draw out the extraordinary! By paying attention to the little things, doing them well, we can eventually reach the great things, we get to the great joys and a great holiness. We have wine again! The better wine!

When we mess up in a big way, we often forget to look at the little things, the small compromises we make—that led us to that state of feeling off, and weighed down by guilt! So, the servants go ahead and do what they’re told by Jesus. They fill the jars with plain old water—nothing special—and then the headwaiter realizes that there’s top-notch wine in there! This is Jesus’ first sign: daily love produces a wonderful wine.

Father Cristiano Pinheiro


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