RB: Ch 4:44-62
Mass: Is 62:1-5; Resp Ps 96; 1 Co 12:4-11; Jn 2:1-11
Fill the jars with water.
Thoughts are random. First, about today's Gospel:
It is a feminine trait to listen, to receive, to watch. Perhaps that is why more women pray than men. Perhaps it is why among contemplatives there are more women than men-it is the 'feminine' which listens and waits. It is a feminine trait, also, to see, to observe. The wine has run out. Mary notices, and being a woman she has a practical mind.
(Basil Hume, Searching for God)
DO WHATEVER HE TELLS YOU.
In the desert, our Lord multiplied the loaves of bread, and in Cana, he changed water into wine. Thus he got people used to his bread and wine, until the time when he gave his body and his blood … He hid sweetness in the wine he made, so as to show his guests what incomparable treasure is hidden in his life-giving blood.
(St Ephrem the Syrian)
The miracle at Cana showed forth the kingdom of heaven, for the kingdom of heaven lies within us, like the wine in the cup.
(Hippolytus)
The marriage to which you have been invited with Jesus can only take place if you are zealous for conversion.
(Isaac of Stella)
Second, regarding the second reading at Mass, in conjunction with a little book (only 78 pages) I just finished by Rowan Williams, Writing in the Dust: After September 11, the Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity, and St Benedict's 'Tools for Good Works'. Reflections went to the beautiful and different kinds of people God created. How busy we can be sometimes wanting to change others, to have people fit our agenda, to be irritated with others for the way he or she does this or that, to put people in boxes, and to tell others what to do, or somehow knowing what the other person needs to do. This way of going about things can be all-consuming and drain one of energy. It may also be a way in which self-righteous indignation is made manifest. The question then becomes: How guilty am I?
THERE ARE DIFFERENT KINDS OF SPIRITUAL GIFTS BUT THE SAME SPIRIT; THERE ARE DIFFERENT FORMS OF SERVICE BUT THE SAME LORD; THERE ARE DIFFERENT WORKINGS BUT THE SAME GOD WHO PRODUCES ALL OF THEM IN EVERYONE.
And Christian faith? Can we think about our focal symbol, the cross of Jesus, and try to rescue it from its frequent fate as the banner of our own wounded righteousness? If Jesus is indeed what God communicated to us, God's language for us, his cross is always both ours and not ours; not a magnified sign of our own suffering, but the mark of God's word in and through the deepest vulnerability; not a martyr's triumphant achievement, but something that is there for all human sufferers because it belongs to no human cause.
(Rowan Williams, Writing in the Dust, pp. 72-73)
Do not aspire to be called holy before you really are, but first be holy that you may more truly be called so.
(RB 4:62)
What will remain of the threshold of eternity is not how much we earned, but how much we gave away.
(Pope Francis, Twitter, January 20, 2019)
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