Published January 20 2025

Sunday January 19 2025

2th Sunday During the Year – Year C

Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

1st reading: Isaiah 62,1-5

Psaume : 95 (96),1-2a,2b-3,7-8a,9a.10ac

2th reading: 1 Corinthians 12,4-11

Gospel: John 2,1-11

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The first reading evokes for us the nuptial dimension that God wants to maintain with his people. When Paul, in the letter to the Ephesians, meditates on this mystery of the Covenant, he even goes so far as to take up the affirmation of the second chapter of Genesis: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they two shall become one flesh.” ; and he comments by saying: "This mystery is great, it applies to Christ and to the Church" (Eph 5,31:33-XNUMX). We could dare to affirm that God creates the human being, man and woman, so that, in this faithful alliance of man and woman, of husband and wife, something of the mystery of God may be revealed to us. It is not the alliance of husband and wife that serves as an image for us to think of the relationship of God with his people; it is the relationship of God with his people, of God with all humanity, which is, one might say, the matrix of human marriage, and the alliance of Christ and the Church which is the reality of the sacrament of marriage.

At the beginning of the Gospel of St. John, after Jesus has been presented to us as the one on whom the Spirit rests, the one who calls us to follow him, we have this episode of the wedding at Cana where Jesus, in a certain way, reveals himself as the true bridegroom. The sign of this in the Gospel is that the master of the feast, when he has tasted the wine, goes to find the bridegroom of the day - because it is normally the bridegroom who offers the wine. By giving this good wine, this excellent wine, Jesus suggests that he places himself as bridegroom. And his mother, the Virgin Mary, is placed as woman in front of Jesus the bridegroom. She will find this title of woman at the foot of the cross, when Jesus will accomplish in his flesh what he symbolically reveals at this wedding at Cana: that he is the bridegroom who gives his life for his bride (Cf. Jn 19,26:XNUMX). His bride is the humanity that he gathers in his body. This humanity in the process of being gathered is the Church. In the Second Vatican Council, the first issue of the great text on the Church, Lumen Gentium, states: "the Church is in Christ as the sacrament, that is, the sign and means of intimate union with God and of the unity of the whole human race". On this Sunday, which falls within the week of prayer for Christian unity, it is good for us to contemplate once again this mystery of the Church, which is humanity being gathered into the unity of the body of Christ, so that the whole human family may enter into the full communion of God the Trinity. God's plan in creating man is to make him share his life, to make him share his joy, his glory, his love.

The Gospel tells us that this is the first sign: This was the beginning of the signs that Jesus performed. So there is no reason for Mary to ask Jesus for a miracle… First, she doesn't ask him anything, she tells him the situation.

In her book “Advice and Memories” Sister Geneviève — namely Thérèse’s sister, Céline — tells this about Thérèse:

When she expressed her wish to do good on earth after her death, she made this condition: Before answering all those who pray to me, I will begin by looking carefully into the eyes of the good Lord to see if I am not asking for something contrary to his will! She pointed out to us that this abandonment imitated the prayer of the Holy Virgin who, at Cana, simply said: "They have no more wine." Similarly, Martha and Mary only said: "The one you love is sick." They simply expressed their desires without formulating a request, leaving Jesus free to do his will.

This remark is interesting to shed light on our prayer, or to shed more precisely light on our way of situating ourselves in relation to God, in relation to Jesus in our prayer. We do not pray to force the hand; we pray to expose our life to the Lord, and consequently to make ourselves available to what God wants to do. But what will Jesus do at the wedding at Cana? Mary knows absolutely nothing about it. No doubt it is he, since Joseph seems no longer to be there, who has the strings of the family purse… Can we go and buy some wine?

Jesus, in his answer, is on another level. First, he calls his mother woman as if he were taking a certain distance. And then there is this sentence - you know that in the text of the Gospel there is no punctuation; punctuation is an interpretation - and you heard as I read Jesus' answer in the form of a negative interrogative: “My time has not yet come?” Mary does not know what Jesus is going to do, but the act of faith that she made at the Annunciation, without really knowing what God is doing, she makes again at the beginning of Jesus' public ministry, drawing us into her act of faith by telling us: “Do whatever he tells you.” There is an echo of the Annunciation: "Let it be done to me according to your word", and Mary brings us into her act of faith. By doing what Jesus says, those who are there will see what he does. And Jesus will thus, as the Gospel says, manifest his glory to them.

For us, it is a question of entering into this nuptial relationship with Jesus. The Church is the bride; Thérèse affirms this in a very sober manner in manuscript B:

I am the Child of the Church, and the Church is Queen since she is your spouse, O Divine King of Kings… (Ms B, 4r)

When we are members of the Church through baptism, we are all in the situation of the bride who receives from the Lord what will make our lives fruitful. We are all in a situation of receptivity to the grace of God, of receptivity to the Word of God, of receptivity to the sacraments through which the Lord acts in us, so that we can through Him, with Him, and in Him, bear fruit. And we all have to learn to love Jesus with a spousal love.

In the Scriptures, and especially in Saint Paul, we have two analogies which complement each other, and we cannot hold the two together: it is the analogy of the head and the body: Christ is the head and the Church is the body of Christ.

And then there is the analogy of the husband and the wife.

And this is why, it seems to me, the battles over which side of the altar the priest should be on are absurd battles; for both express something of the mystery. When the priest is at the head of the assembly, facing the same direction as the assembly towards the altar, it is the head and the body that are evoked. When the priest at the altar faces the assembly, it is the husband and the wife who are evoked. There is not one that is better than the other: both say something of the great mystery and we cannot say everything at the same time. But let us understand well that we are always at the same time members of the body of Christ, and Christ is our head. And at the same time, members of the bride who has to receive her husband, and that we must love the Lord with this love of conjugal tenderness, whether we are man or woman.

Yes, the Lord wants to show us his glory. He wants to draw us into this alliance, he wants to give us now the good wine of the Kingdom. When we come to celebrate the Eucharist, it is the Lord himself who gives himself to us as food. It is the whole Kingdom that is given to us to share so that we can continue our pilgrimage on earth, not only as exiles who yearn for the Homeland, but already as citizens of the Kingdom who bear witness in our world that Christ the Savior is indeed present, that this world is saved and that the more we know how to welcome the grace of Christ, the more we will allow this world to welcome his Salvation.

Amen

Father Emmanuel Schwab, Rector of the Shrine