As we enter this season of Ordinary Time, running from last Monday until Ash Wednesday, it bears noting that, liturgically, Ordinary Time is not contrasted with “Extraordinary Time,” like Advent, Christmas, Lent, or Easter. Rather, it refers to ordinal time, defined as a numbered series. What are serially numbered during Ordinary Time are Sundays. Since every Sunday is “a little Easter,” Christ’s resurrection is the axis around which the liturgical year and Christian life revolves. The Lord's resurrection is the Church's cornerstone and touchstone.
Even though the Church is in Year C of her three-year Sunday lectionary, which means that we focus on the Gospel According to Saint Luke, our Gospel for today is taken from Saint John. Hearing the Miracle at the Wedding Feast of Cana is deliberately congruent with the previous two Sundays, both which are part of Christmas: Epiphany and Baptism of the Lord. Prior to the liturgical reforms that occurred after the Second Vatican Council, the Church observed three Epiphanies: the visit of Magi, the Lord’s Baptism by John in the river Jordan, and His miracle at wedding feast of Cana.
It is only in Year C that the Sunday lectionary keeps the Tradition of the Three Epiphanies. While the Gospels for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time for Years A and B, during which we focus on the Gospels of Matthew and Mark respectively, also come from John, they tell of when John the Baptist identifies Jesus as “the Lamb of God” and baptizes Him, and when His first disciples follow Him.1
If you recall, an epiphany is a sudden realization, even a revelation. It might also be described as a moment of heightened perception when you seem to see things in their true light, one might say, see things as they really are. Epiphanies yield insights. When it comes to Jesus, the Epiphany is that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you recognize Him as Lord, as the verse that immediately precedes our passage from 1 Corinthians today asserts.2
And so, just as we ease into Ordinary Time after Easter with our observances of Trinity Sunday and Corpus Christi, we ease into Ordinary Time after Christmas by pondering the Lord’s third Epiphany. Understanding the liturgical year is critically important not only to understanding but to living our Christian faith, the heart of which is the Paschal Mystery. Observing the liturgical year at Church, at home, and in our lives is how we participate in this great Mystery, which is the mystery of creation and redemption.
In the context of Saint John’s Gospel, which is sometimes called “the Gospel of Signs,” Jesus’ miracle at the wedding feast of Cana is the first of seven signs. Another of these signs we will hear during this year is the sixth sign: the Lord’s healing of the man born blind.3 It is the reading for the Mass during which the Second Scrutiny of the Elect takes place.
Confirmation for the assertion that John’s Gospel is the Gospel of signs can be found within this Gospel:
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of [his] disciples that are not written in this book. But these [the seven signs] are written that you may [come to] believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name4Of course, each of these signs are an Epiphany, a revelation meant to bring you to the realization that “Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God,” who came to give you life eternal.
As it pertains to the miracle at the wedding feast of Cana, which is only found in Saint John’s Gospel, if one were to look at all four Gospels sequentially, Matthew-John, this episode marks the final time that the Blessed Virgin says anything. What she says, she says to the servers: “Do whatever he tells you.”5 Mary, the Mother of God, and our Mother by the grace of God, directs us to Jesus, not to herself.
Of course, the miracle at the wedding feast of Cana is the second of the Luminous Mysteries of the Holy Rosary. It’s fruit? To Jesus through Mary. As Saint Teresa of Calcutta once insisted: No Mary, no Jesus. We might say, know Mary- k-n-o-w-, know Jesus. Since we’re extending Christmas through Lectionary, let’s not forget, even reaching back into Advent, the great Marian observances: Immaculate Conception, Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, and Mary, the Mother of God, which solemnity ushers in the new calendar year. If you're not already doing so, pray the Rosary! Pray it daily if you can.
This year, we have an extra treat. The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, traditionally called Candlemas, which the Church observes on 2 February, and was formerly the observance that marked the end of Christmas, falls on Sunday this year. What a great grace! Let’s allow these sacred observances not only inform us but shape and form us, to bring us to the Spirit-led acknowledgement that Jesus is Lord. This reality needs to then lead us to live lives that further reveal this reality, a life that is itself an Epiphany.
Like the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is our model of discipleship, and through her intercession, let’s lead others to believe in the Redeemer by living like people who are redeemed, like people of the Resurrection.
1 See John 1:29-34 and John 1:35-39.↩
2 1 Corinthians 12:3.↩
3 See John 9:1-41.↩
4 John 20:30-31.↩
5 John 2:5.↩
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