Tribulation is a gift. It doesn’t feel like it at the time. Nevertheless, tribulation is a gift. It is a gift because it prepares us for the Gospel.
The journey of the Magi (“wise men”) to the Christ shows this to us. The Magi don’t find Jesus where they are looking (Jerusalem). Instead they meet a fiendish and duplicitous Herod. Led by the Holy Spirit, the path to Christ went through anxiety and need….
Read MoreA wise man once said, “Some people work very hard at top speed, only to find themselves falling further behind.” Does that describe your life? It’s tempting to imagine that this is the result of our always-connected devices, with the expectation that you work from the moment you awake until the moment before your head hits the pillow. Certainly the ability to be on another continent in a matter of hours, and the twenty-four hour news cycle, leads to a frenzied sort of existence. But at its core, the saying reflects a very old problem. This saying—“Some people work very hard at top speed, only to find themselves falling further behind”—this saying comes from The Wisdom of Sirach [11.11 NJB], a second-century BC Jewish book similar to Proverbs. The more things change, the more they stay the same. I read from the NJB; the ESV is a bit more stately: “There is a man who works and toils and presses on, but falls behind so much the more.”
That idea of failing, falling, falling behind – it’s a universal human experience. Try as we might to accumulate resources, it’s never enough. And time, our most precious commodity, is steadily ticking away. All the fears about population and climate change reflect the human anxiety that we are running short, lacking, dying.
That’s what underlies today’s Gospel. It’s a real event, not a parable. Jesus really did change water into wine at Cana. It’s not fiction – but it is loaded with symbolism. Running out of wine makes the wedding a failure….
Read MoreWhen the Scriptures describe us as being in bondage to sin, it certainly includes the sins we commit - the twisted lusts within us and the things we do contrary to the commandments. But often the sins committed against us also hold us in bondage: when someone betrays us, when a friend you trusted doesn’t keep his word or is working against you. Perhaps you remember a cutting remark spoken against you even decades ago, but still it lingers in the mind, making you bitter, cynical. And so it’s not only the sins that we have committed, but also the sins committed against us, that need to be dealt with.
We would like justice. We want things put right. And sometimes, we want more than justice: we want revenge. For the person whose betrayal still stings, misfortune upon them would, we imagine, taste sweet to us….
Read MoreIn the days of Herod the king, men asked, “Where is He who has been born king of the Jews?”
A dangerous question! Herod was notoriously paranoid, and notoriously ruthless. He eliminated anyone he perceived a threat. This included several sons. To call Herod “troubled” at this news is a masterclass in understatement…
Read MoreIt is no mistake that our Lord chooses to perform His first miracle at a wedding. But it is not simply a miracle, a magic show, a spectacular event to wow the crowd or to help His mother save face. St. John calls it a sign, the beginning of signs. A sign does not exist for itself. A sign signifies, points to something greater.
This sign of transforming water into wine is done in the context of Jesus talking about His hour. Throughout John’s Gospel Jesus says repeatedly, “My hour is not yet come.” Then finally, just before Jesus washes the feet of His disciples, the night before His crucifixion, St. John tells us that that great event, the Passion of Jesus, is His hour: “Now before the Feast of the Passover,” John says in ch. 13, “when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”
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