Second Sunday of the Year Is 62:1-5; 1 Cor 12:4-11; Jn 2:1-11 (Year C)
“About Zion I will not be silent … No longer are you to be named ‘Forsaken’, nor your land ‘Abandoned’, but you shall be called ‘My Delight’ and your land ‘The Wedded’; for the Lord takes delight in you, and your land shall have its wedding. As a bridegroom rejoices in his bride, so will your God rejoice in you.”
No commentator’s words could do justice to the prophet Isaiah’s proclamation of God’s promised salvation. These words were spoken to a people who had known the darkest of nights during the Babylonian exile. They had indeed felt abandoned and forsaken by God. They had longed for the comfort of his presence. The grace of his salvation would outstrip any human expectation: “Like a young man marrying a virgin, so will the one who built you wed you.”
While this New Year is still young, let us take the time to reflect upon the Lord’s overwhelming graciousness towards us.
We can sometimes live as if God were a distant abstraction. Isaiah’s perception was quite different. For him, our God is overwhelming tenderness. His call is to an intimacy beyond our imagining. We could not aspire to such a relationship with God. It is entirely the work of his grace.
Jesus showed himself to be the fulfilment of Isaiah’s promised salvation at the wedding feast of Cana. John’s Gospel skilfully contrasts the poverty of the couple whose wine was spent with the abundance of Jesus’s response. “Jesus said to the servants, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them to the brim. ‘Draw some out now and take it to the steward.’ They did this; the steward tasted the water and it had turned to wine.”
This was no casual act of generosity. It was truly a sign reaching beyond the mundane to express the meaning of God’s presence in Jesus. In Christ, the Father lifts us to himself. In him, the everyday water of human existence becomes the wine of God’s presence. The same thread of thought is carried through to John’s Book of Revelation. Here the fulfilment of our redemption at the end of time is described as the marriage feast of the Lamb.
As we approach the Lord in Holy Communion, let us be conscious of the gracious invitation that precedes it: “Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.”
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