Saturday of 2nd Week of Christmas 2023
Many of us, when we lay out our plans for the day or week or year, like New Year’s resolutions, add the tag line, “God willing.” That may be an ancient holdover from paganism, whereby a petitioner at a shrine would make his sacrifice or offering and then say something like that or even knock on the wooden idol as a sign of respect. Today you’ll still hear some folks add “knock on wood” to a plan or hope they express.
Today’s readings help us to move toward a more orthodox way of living and expressing ourselves, I believe. We may have heard the Gospel from the second chapter of St. John’s Gospel many times. Let’s remember that Jesus is true God and true man in one divine Person. We just celebrated His birth and manifestation to the world as a baby. He grew in wisdom and knowledge. A lot of that wisdom and knowledge came from Mary, His human mother. She was teaching the divine person how to be a human being–the quintessential human being. She knew He was to be the model for every Christian who would be baptized into His community, His Church. So here, at Cana, Mary was helping Jesus to see God’s will for the beginning of His ministry of healing and reconciliation. Wine was the fuel for a true wedding celebration in first-century Israel. We don’t know why the wine ran out. There may have been no expectation that Mary’s Son was going to bring all His friends to the party. So Mary, always sensitive to such crises, brought the problem to Jesus. His initial response was not “I’ll fix that.” No, He asked “what is that to me and to thee? My hour has not yet come.” Jesus knew that any miraculous intervention there would surely be widely known just by word of mouth, and that would ultimately lead to conflict with the religious, maybe even the secular authorities. We don’t hear any additional dialogue between mother and Son. We just hear Mary tell the servants “Do whatever He tells you.” And Jesus took charge and worked the miracle–not just cheap wine, but $500 a bottle wine. Mary, then, was the interpreter of God’s will, and Jesus followed that divine direction all the way to the cross.
After many years of preaching and liturgical celebration and contemplation, St. John then gave us the three little letters that help us live our daily discernment and following of the Father’s will. We can, he tells us, confidently ask for anything according to the Father’s will, knowing that we will be heard. Moreover, we will obtain the requests we make. To understand what that means, we need to step back and consider where we stand when we pray. We are not down in a hole, looking up at God a million miles away and hoping we say the right words needed to change His mind about us. No. We are baptized into Christ, into His death and resurrection, into a life of faith. As such, we always stand with and in Christ when we pray. That’s why we ask “in the name of Jesus.” We are asking with and in Jesus in that intimate bond to the Father. Whispering into the Father’s ear, so to speak. We don’t have to change God’s mind. It has been His plan for all ages to bring us into eternal communion with Him, with the Trinity of Persons.
So we don’t pray to God that we win the next lottery, even if we–I think foolishly–buy a ticket. God wants so much more for us–eternal happiness in His presence. So we ask for the grace to attain that blessed, unending union, not only for ourselves but for everyone, especially our siblings in faith. See what St. John says right after those words about asking for anything according to the Father’s will. The Father’s will is our salvation, and that of the whole world. So we are being told if we see a brother or sister Christian committing a sin that doesn’t appear to be deadly, we should pray for God to give him grace, grace of forgiveness and grace of spiritual growth. Then, if we discern that to be helpful, St. Matthew’s Gospel tells us the steps to take to bring the error to our fellow Christian’s attention. This is how the community grows and becomes stronger. This is how we plug into God’s will, as Mary did at Cana with Our Lord.
