Weekdays of Christian Season, Saturday January 7

Scripture Readings: 1 Jn 5:14-21;  Jn 2:1-12

“He will baptize you in water and holy spirit,” John said yesterday about Jesus, and today at the wedding feast Jesus himself, from whose side on the Cross will come water and blood, is the stone water jar for cleansing whose words are Spirit and life.  It is a wedding, on the third day, as the text of the Gospel says: divinity joined to humanity in the Incarnation, Christ to the Church in word and sacrament, the soul with God in the embrace of wills that makes   one spirit; the third day, the endless day of resurrection life which is the politics of the Kingdom of God that all Christians bring to bear on other regimes, welcome or not.

The mother of Jesus was there, who there at the foot of the Cross would be given, almost as in a marriage, but as a mother, to John, to us, her son, her daughter. The hour that would not come till the Passion has come, and the glory not seen till then is seen. “Do whatever he tells you,” because if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.  “Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.”  The head waiter did not know where the wine had   come from, nor why, we suppose, it was in jars for washing feet and not in wine jugs. “He was in the world but the world did not know him.” “Where are you from,” Pilate will ask Jesus, the Man, crowned, like a King, like a Groom on his wedding day, but with thorns. Indeed, the Bridegroom, who is God the Father, has saved the best wine till last, the first being the wine Noah drank and got drunk on to his shame. Everything has changed: water is wine, word is flesh, the future hour is now, what will be is, what seems is no more. “In this Word and Light of God, who is man, all is new”;¹ all is accomplished.

 1.  Gerard Sloyan, his Interpretation commentary of John, 1988.