
John 2:1-11
Though our liturgical calendar tells us that we are now beginning the second week in Ordinary Time, there are remnants of Epiphany in our liturgy. The celebration of the coming of the Magi, the Baptism of Jesus and the Wedding at Cana are all connected. They are all seen in Greek as Epiphanes ( Ἐπιφανής), meaning ‘manifest’. In three different, but connected ways, we see the glory of God made manifest.
I always have a sense at the beginning of Ordinary Time that I need to gird my biblical loins and attend to the Scripture that will be laid before me. Today’s story of the Wedding at Cana helps me enter Ordinary Time with a sense of awe and mystery. John’s Gospel lays out for us golden threads for us to follow.
Malcolm Guite weaves together here John’s golden threads and the ordinary stuff of our lives:
EPIPHANY AT CANA
Here’s an epiphany to have and hold,
A truth that you can taste upon the tongue,
No distant shrines and canopies of gold
Or ladders to be clambered rung by rung,
But here and now, amidst your daily living,
Where you can taste and touch and feel and see,
The spring of love, the fount of all forgiving,
Flows when you need it, rich, abundant, free.
Better than waters of some outer weeping,
That leave you still with all your hidden sin,
Here is a vintage richer for the keeping
That works its transformation from within.
‘What price?’ you ask me, as we raise the glass,
‘It cost our Saviour everything he has.’
Look back over the week. Have you seen water turned to wine?
Where have you sensed ‘the spring of love, the fount of all forgiving’ ?