2nd Sunday after Epiphany
17.1.21 Transformed
The fact that Our Lord chose a wedding as the occasion of His first public miracles can be seen as an endorsement of how important God regards marriage in His plans.
He wants marriages to be sustained by His love, enabling husband and wife to love each other.
He wants married couples to reach a point that they would be willing to die for each other.
The measure of love is how much one would be prepared to suffer for the other person.
The marriage at Cana suggests the mystical marriage of Christ with the Church. He shows that He is willing to die for the Bride, and as well to give her a share in all that He has.
Christ can give various blessings - physical healing, miraculous food, forgiveness of sin.
The biggest and best thing He can give is a share in His own nature, and with that an ability to love as He does.
He says Love one another as I have loved you (Jn 13,34), and He means that not just as an imitation but a participation.
He cherishes the Bride as His own body. He loves far more than He is loved in return.
We are transformed in our contemplation of Him; we are being made into something better, as individuals and as the whole Church.
The Church as bride is being purified of sin (Eph 5,25-33), and with that is being transformed into radiant beauty ready to meet her husband (Rev 21,2).
The miracle of Cana hints at this transformation. There, Our Lord changes water into wine, foreshadowing that later He would change wine into blood.
Each stage is better than the one before. Water is fine; wine is better; blood is the best of all - not in taste, but in its effects on us.
Water will keep us alive; wine will bring us joy; the Blood will change us - into something better.
The Precious Blood is the strongest drink we will ever have; it will overpower us in terms of its effectiveness!
It conforms us to Christ, so that we are united with Him, and healed by him. We start to think more like He does; to take on His view of the world.
This is medicine for the soul, that will help us discover our true humanity, not the weak humanity of the flesh, but the transformed humanity of the spirit.
We are drinking pure goodness and power, and this will change us. All this presumes that we are approaching Him sincerely in Holy Communion. We have to be engaged in the process, really seeking to be changed by Him. We do not have to be perfect - not all at once; but at least willing to be perfected.
In each Communion His blood is poured out in love for us, a love which was challenged to the full and expressed in practice, not just remaining a theoretical possibility.
What Our Lord gives us has infinite value. What we return will improve each time as we let His love work in us.
We develop a capacity to suffer for love, and this is the best state we can reach as humans. This is to be Christ-like on our part.
So the Bride grows in love for the Bridegroom. Long may it be so.
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