Second Sunday in ordinary time, Cycle C. Today’s readings: Isaiah 62:1-5; 1 Corinthians 12:4-11; John 2:1-11
Nothing gives more life and joy than being in love. I have personally witnessed people being transformed simply by knowing they are not only liked, but even loved. Life that seems so drab and tasteless suddenly effervesces with life-giving abundance.
Falling in love transcends reason, a nod to unmerited love, which in turn evokes reciprocity in those who experience it. Love is neither demanded nor expected in return. As happens with the exchange of gifts, the one who is loved cannot but respond in a similar way.
Anthropologist Bronisalw Malinowski theorised about gift-exchange when he wrote about the Kula ring that natives of an archipelago of islands in the Pacific Ocean gifted each other as a sign of respect and as a means of strengthening community bonds between them.
The newly-wed couple from Cana, about whom we read in today’s Gospel experience their very first crisis when they run out of wine on their wedding day. In semitic culture, wine symbolises joy, love, life and abundant blessings.
What happens next is what John the Evangelist calls not merely a miracle but a sign, the first out of seven, recorded to reveal who Jesus is. As with all the other signs in this fourth Gospel, the gift is the giver and the giver is the gift. Jesus is, in fact, at once the groom and the new wine.
The six stone jars, each holding between 100 or 120 litres, used for the ritual washing, were empty until Jesus asked the stewards to fill them to the brim. They represent our stone hearts, big but barren, our longing for wholeness (six being the biblical number for imperfection), and above all, they evoke our petty efforts to save ourselves.
The logic of the unconditional gift can find a place even within established economic and political systems- Pope Benedict XVI
Just like the groom, we are not introduced to the bride directly. Her presence is merely assumed. She represents the betrothed people of God, the Church, we who are bound to God in a loving covenant. “As a bridegroom rejoices in his bride,” we read in Isaiah, “so shall your God rejoice in you.”
At Mary’s prompting, Jesus turns the water into wine in the context of the hour, a clear reference to his ultimate life-giving act of love on the cross, the effects of which are joy and life.
“I have come,” says Jesus elsewhere in the same Gospel, “that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete” and “that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly.” This is reflected in the head steward who marvels at the wine of superior quality that Jesus provides.
Marriage, being a covenant of love, rather than a contract, reflects this life-giving relationship. I had chosen this passage for my thanksgiving mass after my ordination as it reminds me of Christ’s life-giving love for his Church, which is mirrored in the ministerial priesthood.
Our world must acknowledge and normalise more instances of covenantal relationships. Patterned on Christ’s love for humanity, they exude love and generosity. In his social encyclical Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI had called this the logic of the unconditional gift, which, he insisted, can find a place even within established economic and political systems.
Such actions ought to be brought to the fore and celebrated. Consider the collective effect of mothers who nurse their young, people who engage in voluntary work for good causes, or farmers who feel so bound to the land they till that they will never sell it for profit.
Economically, these initiatives might have a negligible impact on a country’s GDP. Yet they are all powerful experiences of covenantal relationships, concrete practices that change water into wine.
As the former Jesuit superior general Pedro Aruppe once said, “fall in love, stay in love and it will decide everything”. May Christ’s new wine always flow abundantly in our lives.