Thursday 19 January 2023

2nd Sunday after Epiphany 15 Jan 2023 Sermon

2nd Sunday after Epiphany 15 January 2023 Cana

The abundance of Our Lord’s miracles show God’s desire to bless more than we expect.

So much wine and so good, more than needed. It reminds us of the loaves and fishes, where there were twelve baskets left over.

Dare to ask is one lesson. God will not grow tired of our asking; He might teach us how to ask more effectively, but as to the asking itself He wants us to have an ongoing trust in Him.

He wants us to love Him more than anything He can give us.

In Heaven it is our love for God which will be our greatest source of happiness, not the abundance of food and drink, or other pleasures.

We might envisage Heaven as a place where all our needs are met, but our needs go beyond pleasure. Our greatest need, though we may not know it, is to be united with God, to share in His divinity, as He has shared in our humanity.

This sharing in God’s nature will mean that we have the same objectives as He has. God wants to save sinners, to bring as many people as possible to union with Himself.

And this union is an active conscious union, culminating in being able to share in His sacrifice, to give of oneself for others.

When we are sufficiently united with Him in faith hope and charity we do not cling to this life but are prepared to go to the fullest extent that God would ask of us.

This is not something we would have thought of at first, but we can grow into the role. God consecrates us through Baptism and the Eucharist to be united with Him.

When we receive Holy Communion each time there is a question implied. Would you follow Me to Calvary? Our acceptance of His Body and Blood is an implied answer that we are putting ourselves in His hands to make of us what He will.

If we are not ready today or tomorrow we will be at some future point.

What to ask for if we pray? Yes, we can still pray for the temporal needs, like having enough money to pay the bills, but we do not stop with those needs, going further into the heart of the matter.

When we ask for things we are asking in a higher realm than self-satisfaction.

Everyone is hiding, trying to avoid sacrifices, but we are given vision and capabilities beyond what we knew before.

This explains why we do not get everything we ask for because God interprets our prayer in terms of what is best for us, going into the future.

They have no wine… it is enough to say this. God knows what we need before we ask Him, but He wants us to ask for it so that we can interact with Him.

We do not seek to change God’s will so much as to bring ourselves into line with it.

This is hard if we are really emotionally invested in a certain outcome, but we come to see that God always knows best.

God knows that we don’t know what to ask sometimes. He asks us to trust in Him to bring about the best possible result.

We can also make professions of trust in Him in a general way, apart from any particular crisis, but just to deepen our relationship with Him.

It is only sin that makes it so hard as it has become. Once we are fully reconciled with God, it all falls into place. 

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