Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, January 17, 2016, Year C
The way St. John writes his Gospel is different from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, the so-called synoptics. All Gospels present us with several miracles of Jesus, but only John calls the miracles “signs”. For him all extraordinary acts of Jesus are simply signs of another greater reality God wants to give us.
For example, Jesus feeds the five thousand people in the desert who are excited because they had a good meal free of charge. Immediately, John points out that this bread is only a sign of another “bread from heaven” that Jesus wants to give us: the gift of his body and blood – the gift of his whole self. Or take the miracle of Jesus curing a blind man in the temple. All of a sudden the man can see Jesus for the first time as well as the world around him. Later, they meet again and Jesus asks him: “Do you believe in the Son of Man? ...You have seen him now!” The man begins to see him with eyes of faith, as the Messiah.
Similarly, Jesus changes water into wine, enough wine to get the whole party drunk. He changes something ordinary into an extraordinarily precious wine. In the end John explains: “Jesus manifested his glory and his disciples began to believe in Him.” The signs say who God is and what God wants to do with us and for us, namely to change our poor human reality into something new, something greater, something divine. Whenever God touches us and begins to change us into his children, it is like drinking a really good wine. It fills overwhelming joy without the morning-after headache.
Jesus performed this first sign in the context of a marriage feast. He wants to change life and marriage from a purely human relationship into a sign and an experience of God’s faithful love for us, or, as St. Paul writes, of Christ’s love for the church. Paul talks of marriage as a profound mystery which “refers to Christ and the church” (Eph 5:32).
This may seem to us a lot of pious talk with little relevance to the strains and stresses of family life today of which the bishops talked during the recent synod on the family. We have only to think of the refugees, many of whom live among us far away from their families, or of the couples who see each other only on weekends because of today’s working conditions. And yet, when married people give each other the promise to love and honor each other in good and bad times, they promise something only God can do: to love unconditionally.
But yet, this is precisely what humans most desire: unconditional love not because of looks, health, wealth or success, but for their own sake, for who they are. True love always entails an element of eternity as millions of love songs in every culture testify. Who will trust a partner who promises love till the end of the year? Unconditional love is also what every child wants and needs: a stable family and loving, reliable relationships. And when a relationship meant for life breaks for whatever reason, it involves a lot of pain and hurt for children and parents.
A commitment to another person always involves a risk, a risk we can take when we put our trust in a faithful God. But if we do not have the courage to take the risk of a definite commitment, we stay at the level of the changing waters of human love and miss out on the wine of God’s unconditional faithful love. Do we want to stick with the water or dare we go for the wine?
Fr. Wolfgang Schonecke MAfr
