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SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME JANUARY 20, 2019


Mass Readings for Today can be found here:

A Reading from the holy Gospel according to John 2:1-11 Gospel according to John. There was a wedding at Cana in Galilee,

and the mother of Jesus was there.

Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the wedding.

When the wine ran short,

the mother of Jesus said to him,

"They have no wine."

And Jesus said to her,

"Woman, how does your concern affect me?

My hour has not yet come."

His mother said to the servers,

"Do whatever he tells you."

Now there were six stone water jars there for Jewish ceremonial washings,

each holding twenty to thirty gallons.

Jesus told the them,

"Fill the jars with water."

So they filled them to the brim.

Then he told them,

"Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter."

So they took it.

And when the headwaiter tasted the water that had become wine,

without knowing where it came from

— although the servers who had drawn the water knew —,

the headwaiter called the bridegroom and said to him,

"Everyone serves good wine first,

and then when people have drunk freely, an inferior one;

but you have kept the good wine until now."

Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs at Cana in Galilee

and so revealed his glory,

and his disciples began to believe in him.

Reflection:

Many of the miracles that Jesus performs in the Gospels seem to have extra minor characters; the servers pouring water into the six stone water jars, the little boy who supplied the five loaves and two fishes in the feeding of the five thousand, the four friends who lowered the paralytic man down a ceiling to be healed.

In today’s Gospel, of course Jesus would have known that the wedding had run out of wine without being told. Yet, the prompting of Mary is what triggered his miracle.

The pattern I see is that God always wants to include humanity in all his glorious works. He can do anything - there is no need for water to be poured into the jars for it to become wine - yet he asks for this simple and strange task to be done. Similarly, God created the world from nothing - there is no need of the five loaves and two fishes from the little boy for him to feed the five thousand people. Yet He did not choose to perform his miraculous works without human co-operation.

God asks us to do the ordinary, so that He can do the extraordinary. He asks us to be obedient in the mundane tasks that may not seem to make sense to us at the time, to teach us the fruits of trust and faith in His goodness. And finally, Jesus reminds us to include the Blessed Mother in all our major life plans and we will never be without His blessings.


PAPA Foundation
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