| Homily for the 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time: January 17, 2010
Given by the Most Reverend Stephen E. Blaire at the Cathedral of the Annunciation in Stockton.
God is married. We do not usually think of God in this way. But it is true. Isaiah says so: “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.”
Jesus Himself said so to the disciples of John the Baptist when they asked about fasting: “Surely the bridegroom’s attendants cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is still with them? But the time will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.” (Mt.9:15)
Paul said so: “Husbands should love their wives, just as Christ loved the Church….This is why a man leaves his father and mother and becomes attached to his wife, and the two become one flesh. This mystery has great significance, but I am applying it to Christ and the Church.” (Eph5:25-32)
The marriage between God and His people – the Church – is a happy one. The first of the signs Jesus worked changing water into wine was not an unhappy, austere occasion.
Carol Houselander, the British poet, mystic and spiritual writer who died in 1957, wrote: “The marriage at Cana is a showing of the joy that Christ brought into the world…it was simply giving joy, more joy, to people who were already rejoicing….”
There is an unexplainable happiness in being part of a Church which is married to Christ. Again Carol Houselander: “The joy of God is a wine that changes the drab, cold, colorless substance of human nature into the rich, crimson warm vitality of supernatural life. It changes discouragement to hope, doubt to faith, it lights up the mind….Who can work such a miracle but Christ?”
On this sad weekend when we are overwhelmed by the suffering of the people of Haiti, it is the joyful person whose heart aches at such tragedy.
It is the joyful person who does not turn off the TV and say: “I can’t take it anymore,” but rather says right away: “What can I do to help?”
It is the joyful person, not the melancholic, who knows how to feel with people in their pain, and walk with them.
The first of Jesus’ signs in John’s Gospel presents the kingdom of God as a wedding banquet where the wine flows. There is a happiness in being married to God where Christ never stops turning drab water into joyful wine. This joy of our faith we can bring to others. We too can change water into wine.
Last Update January 19, 2010
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