The Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

January 20, 2019

Alleluia, Alleluia.

God has called us through the Gospel

to possess the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Alleluia, Alleluia.

.

The Gospel of Saint John 2: 1 – 11

There was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.  Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the wedding.

When the wine ran short, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.”  And Jesus said to her, “Woman, how does your concern affect me?  My hour has not yet come.”  His mother said to the servers, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Now there were six stone water jars there for Jewish ceremonial washings, each holding twenty to thirty gallons.  Jesus told them, “Fill the jars with water.”  So they filled them to the brim.  Then he told them, “Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter.”  So they took it. 

And when the headwaiter tasted the water that had become wine, without knowing where it came from — although the servers who had drawn the water knew — the headwaiter called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves good wine first, and then when people have drunk freely, an inferior one; but you have kept the good wine until now.”

Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs at Cana in Galilee and so revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him.

The Gospel of the Lord

REFLECTION by Monsignor Joseph Marino

On this past Monday we began the Church’s Ordinary Time of the Liturgical Year.  There are thirty-three or thirty-four weeks which make up this Ordinary Time in which no specific event of Christ’s mystery is being emphasized.   During this Ordinary Time we celebrate the fullness of Christ’s Life, Death and Resurrection.   Ordinary Liturgical Time is not insignificant or unimportant.  Like life itself, we are not always celebrating birthdays or significant events of life.  In between these special moments we live ordinary daily lives.  Yet, when all is said and done, it is in the ordinary activities that our lives are really defined.   We are not called by Christ to be just Christmas and Easter Catholics.  Our calling in Baptism is to imitate Christ – to be Christ every ordinary day in our ordinary words and deeds.  We participate in Mass on holydays and ordinary days; we act in charity on Christmas, Easter and all ordinary days!

At this Ordinary Time we move from the beautiful white and gold vestments to the green colored ones.  This is not because we are anxiously awaiting spring, but because green is the color of life and vitality.  We continue to live, and move and have our being in Christ!  We engage every day with living faith that Jesus is with us transforming us into living examples of Him.  So let us live our ordinary lives in Christ: let us reflect the green vitality of His life in us.

Even though the Marriage Feast of Cana is one of the three Epiphany – Theophany moments of Jesus Christ (the others being the Feast of the Magi and the Baptism of the Lord) and rightly is a Christmas Season feast, it is provided this Sunday because it dramatically displays the initiation of Jesus’ public ministry.  The Gospel proclaims the beginning of his signs, the transforming power of Jesus.  The ordinary element of water is transformed by Jesus into the extraordinary beverage of wine.  The earthly creature water is transformed into the sign of the divine wine of the marriage feast of heaven.  The elements at Mass, the bread and wine are transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ.   All the sacraments are given to us to transform us into Christ – to fulfill our Baptismal destiny.   The events of the Gospel repeatedly reveal that the purpose of Christ’s mission from the Father was and is: to transform us into Himself — the only way to eternal life!

St. John’s Gospel tells us that Jesus Christ seized the moment in Cana even though He felt: My hour has not yet come.   Jesus conceding to His mother’s significant intervention and began to reveal through this first sign that the will of God is to transform us into good wine so that in turn, we may nourish and transform the world with our corporal and spiritual works of mercy, just like Jesus!

Prosit,

Monsignor Joseph Marino