II Sunday C
Readings: Is 62:1-5; 1 Cor 12:4-11; Jn 2:1-12
TO GOD, OUR BRIDEGROOM
What mystery of Love is this, Lord? You, God, have fallen madly in love with men, and you burst forth in an irrepressible hymn of love: “For Zion’s sake I will not be silent, for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest…” (Isaiah 62:1f: First Reading); you tenderly pamper us as the king caresses his crown or the priest his tiara, indeed we are almost the reason for your kingship and sacredness (v. 3); you speak to us in sweet words of a lover: “My darling, my treasure, my love” (v. 4: other than the translation, “My delight”….!). It sounds unbelievable, but we are your joy: “As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you” (v. 5): you, O God, … have lost your mind for us, contemplate us rapturously, exult and tremble with happiness for us! How great is man! But above all, what a miracle is your love, Lord! How it should exalt us at every moment to think that we are so important to you! Never again should sadness, depression, self-doubt have room in our lives! And then, you, O Lord, in spite of our many prostitutions, even remake us virgins (v. 5; cf. Jer 31:4); not only do you forget all our betrayals, but you undo them, as if they had never been committed. And your love, O God, transfigures us: on us you pour out your glory, and you now call us by a new name (v. 2), you fill us with gifts by the power of your Spirit (Second Reading: 1 Cor 12:4-11). The ineffable wedding with you transforms our reality of abandonment and devastation into the reality of immense happiness (Is 62:4): it is the creative power of love (v. 5)…
In the New Testament you, Jesus, not only confirm this proclamation of Love but give its concrete fulfillment: by now you are the Bridegroom for whom one must rejoice (Mt 9:15; Jn 3:29), whom one must wait vigilantly (Mt 25:1-12), to whom one must present oneself in the white wedding garment (Mt 22:11); you are the Bridegroom who loves his church to the point of laying down his life for her (Eph 5:21-32); you are the only Bridegroom, to whom we must present ourselves as a chaste virgin (2 Cor 11:2); you are the Bridegroom, whose wedding time has come, and for whom the Bride has been prepared (Rev 19:7-8), all adorned (Rev 21:2. 9), and to whom the Bride says, “Come!” (Rev 22:17). At Cana therefore you perform a mime, one of those “prophetic actions” that prophets are wont to perform to express a message concretely. Here the protagonists are not the bride and groom: the bride is not even named…; here you celebrate the mystical wedding between you, Messianic Bridegroom, and your Bride, represented by the mother and disciples. Well did you know, in fact, that one of the constant images in the Old Testament to express the joy of the final days, when Christ would come, was precisely the abundance of wine (Am 9:13-14; Hos 14:8; Jer 13:12; Gl 2:24…): so you perform this strange miracle, in which you procure for that feast something like… seven hundred liters of wine: undoubtedly a little too much for a banquet, but a clear sign of the abundance of the messianic times. At Cana, you borrow “that wedding” to signify the mystery of your divine nuptiality.
The Song of Songs began with the Bride’s passionate invocation, “Kiss me with the kisses of your mouth!” (Song 1:2): now this longing is fulfilled in you, Word of God made flesh (Jn. 1:14), Kiss of God’s mouth. Help us to respond, “I love you!” to your, “I love you!” with “all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, with all our mind” (Lk 10:27). Help us not to be, towards you, an “adulterous generation” (Mk 8:38), betraying your divine Love. But grant that, intoxicated with happiness for you, wonderful Lover, we may always sing with all our lives the wonder and amazement of this your Love “strong as death, tenacious as the underworld, blaze of fire, flame of God” (Song 8:6)!