I am preaching this weekend on the 2nd Sunday in Ordinary time. In giving a homily, the goal is not to present theological insights necessarily, but to draw out of the Gospel, insights that parishioners might apply to their own situations and lives. But I'm tempted to get a little theological. Now I have always loved how the Church Fathers, as early as the 2nd century, latched on to the truth that Mary is the new Eve. And since the Woman in the Garden was not named Eve by Adam until after their expulsion on the 6th day, then the title Woman carries significance for Catholics because of this Sunday's Gospel. How so? Well, the woman of Genesis, places her desire, before obedience to God, while the new Eve (Mary) in today's Gospel, quietly defers to Jesus in her humility. In the Garden, the first Eve allows pride to lead to that very first sin. Humility remains a difficult virtue for me. How about you? It's fascinating that in today's first chapter of John, the Apostle describes a series of real life events that occur over the course of days which end with the wedding at Cana on the 6th day. And since John writes that Jesus addresses Mary as "Woman" at the wedding, we can rejoice that Mary reveals herself the opposite of the original Woman on the 6th day in the Garden. Mary is a new Eve who acts humbly. How so? The briefest of all conversations occurs at the wedding in Cana: 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.” And so, "the Woman" of John's Gospel (on the 6th day), gives no rebuttal, but acquiesces and then says to the waiters, "Do whatever he tells you." The Eve of Genesis fell through pride, while the new Eve (Mary) quietly defers to Jesus in her humility. In the Garden, Eve does what she wants to do, while at the wedding Mary steps aside to allow Jesus to do what he thinks best. How can I, how can each of us, follow Mary's example and let others have their way. We live in a "me first" culture. Jesus calls us to humility, to help others in need without drawing attention to ourselves. We can respond to the needs of a family member, a co-worker, or a neighbor before ourselves. Mary, in her good example, and in her quiet way, let the wedding festivities go on! She saw a couple in need, and sought that they avoid embarassment. May each of us give room for Mary in our own heart, that we may follow her good example. By following Our Lady's good example, may we experience the wonder of God's joy in us that we find in the closing of our first reading from Isaiah! As a young man marries a virgin, your Builder shall marry you; and as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride so shall your God rejoice in you. May I, may we receive the grace of humility which Mary exhibited so well at Cana, so that the wedding festivities may go on. _______________________________________________________ Though I will continue to work on it, is the above too theological?
Its brilliant! It struck a chord with me right off the bat. Someone (probably more than one) are meant to hear that homily! Put it out there!!
Yes, this is truly theological. I still remember a vincetian priest had enlighted this exact point online during covid sessions. How miraculous gospels we have by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? All glory to God!
My Brother. What you have so far is beautiful and very good as is. If you wish, and feel it appropriate, you can tie in the wedding feast at the foot of the Crucifix. The Woman, Mary, now did not have to ask for more wine because it was now Christ’s time. His Blood flowed freely as the Wine of the everlasting covenant which never runs dry. His Bride, redeemed from the sin of the first woman, is now placed under the care of The Woman (Mary). While satan looked on with glee as the first woman’s pride brought slavery, he now looks on with dismay as The Woman humbly leads Christ’s Bride to true freedom within the Trinity. Perhaps the above only clouds the truth that you already have presented. I leave that to your discernment for what the Holy Ghost wants to say through you. Peace my Brother, Ed
Beautiful Terry and unusual. I have not heard many homilies on Our Lady in recent years, or perhaps I have and have forgotten. So you writing about her really stands out. It strikes me that speaking about Mary comes so much more from the heart than from the head. That we discover her in prayer more than anywhere else. That a veil is drawn across her as Jesus said of the Parables: Matthew 13:13 This is why I speak to them in parables: “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. Recently in saying the Rosary I am so conscious of this Mystical Veil , this entry into the Holy of Holies being drawn back a little and what a great, great privlege it is to see these things. It seems to me that the Mystery of Mary's Assumption into Heaven Body and Soul is a huge, huge Sign of Hope. It points towards Mary as the New Eve the end towards which we all walk. It is no accident that we see two Mysteries side by side the Resurrection and he Assumption. The New Adam and the New Eve. A kind of Glorious end point towards which we all walk. Fulton Sheen used to preach about Our Blessed Mother all the time. As far as I recall when I was young priests used to do this all the time. But saying the Rosary was very common back then too. Thus the knot of Eve's disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. What the virgin Eve had bound in unbelief, the Virgin Mary loosed through faith.". St. Irenaeus
I would expect that preaching on Mary will stir the devil to poke up opposition against you; that should not stop you but it is good to be aware of it in advance.
Thank you Terry. It’s beautiful. Yes pride clouded Eve (and Adam) and led to their sin. But I also see a lesson in all of this about the Devil’s role. He knew their pride and used it against them. I think at the heart of it was the devil used lies and his deceit to convince that God really did not love them. He said I’m so many words, don’t rely on God… rely on yourself. Become your own God. The lesson for me is the devil still does this with humans (at least this human). He whispers that God does not love you. He uses the challenges and tragedies of life to convince you of that. He uses our pride to think we know better than God. Lies! The beauty and lesson of Mary is as you said she had no pride. And she always knew especially in times of trials most especially during Her Son’s passion that God still loved her. This has been hard for me these past months with the accident we had. The devil is often at me but the miracle is God had protected my wife and I not only physically but much more importantly our souls. I’ve seen Gods blessing and love through the many tears I’ve shed. Maybe faith is as simple as knowing God really does love me warts and all. Thank you so much Terry for sharing your homily because it led me to God today. I hope it does the same for tge parishioners who hear you on Sunday. God is good.
What bible have you Mario? Mine and a few others I have checked say that the Cana wedding was on the third day.
The first strong nuptial imagery that we get in the Gospel of John related to Jesus is, of course, the marriage at Cana, which is obviously a nuptial situation. But I want to point out just a few basic facts about the way the marriage at Cana is described in the Gospel of John. You see in John 2:1: On the third day there was a marriage at Cana in Galilee… Let’s stop there for just one moment. It says “on the third day”. The third day from what? What’s being counted here? To find out the third day from what, we have to back up into chapter 1 and we have to really backtrack to the beginning of the gospel itself. If we backed up into chapter 1, we go back up and the first time reference we find working backwards is verse 43, where it says “the next day”. The next day from what? We have to back up further, we go up to verse 35 and we find the next day. Next day from what? Well back up further and we get up to verse 29 and we find the next day. If we back up from verse 29, we have no other indications of a time previous. So now let’s run through this in chronological order now, starting from chapter 1, all the way down. Apparently, the first stuff that happens in history in John is in verse 19, when it starts talking about John the Baptist talking with the Jews who come down to ask who he is. It narrates all that and that apparently is the first day of the gospel the way the gospel narrates it. So that would be verses 19-28. And when you hit verse 29, all of us sudden it’s the next day. So that day would then be day 2 (the events from verses 29-34 would be day 2). And then verse 35, the next day (that puts into day 3), the events down to verse 43. Verse 43 says “the next day”, so now what day is it? Day 4, ok. Go all the way down; the next time indicator we get is chapter 2 verse 1, “on the third day.” So, the third day from what? The third day from the fourth day. So you count, 1-2-3-4….5, 6, 7. It brings us to the sabbath of this gospel. The 7th day that’s narrated in this gospel. Is that of any significance? Well think about the talk we had earlier, talking about the so-called two creation narratives which still need to be read as one. Adam, created on the sixth day, falls into sleep, Eve made from a side. He wakes up; that would be the morning of the 7th day. That’s when you have this wedding of the first Adam and Eve, the first human pair in the creation story. Now what do we have in the Gospel of John? Is there any links to Genesis, say, even Genesis 1 and the Gospel of John? Are there any subtle clues that he’s telling a story that is somehow related to the creation story? Like, maybe starting off the book with “In the beginning”, and then talking about “all things being made”, and then talking about “light and darkness”, “created on the first day”. That’s all in the prologue of the Gospel of John, all this language taken from the creation story in Genesis. What is the whole point of that? Jesus is our new creation. When you come to Jesus it’s such a moving experience, it’s like being made new, being made all over. And this is and idea that the Apostle John pursues elsewhere in the Gospel of John. Like in John 9, where a man who is born blind in darkness, plunges himself into water at the pool of Salome and comes back and can see what? Light; which is a type of Baptism, and Baptism is a type of the new creation, because how is the world made? It began with the spirit moving over the waters and then the dry land was brought up out of the water. So when we are plunged into the baptismal font and brought back up — and that’s the fullest sign of Baptism, is immersion (like practiced in ancient church, sometimes still practiced today), that’s the fullest of the sign, when you are brought up out of the waters — you are like the dry land being created for the first time. You are a new creation. So that’s why Saint Paul says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.” So what’s the Gospel of John presenting us with? It’s the seven days of the new creation, and on the 7th day of the first creation we had the new man and the new woman come forward. Now, not coincidentally, on the 7th day of the new creation in the Gospel John, we have a wedding and the only identified characters in the story are Jesus and his mother. These are the only named persons. Now it is not the marriage of Jesus; it’s not the marriage of our blessed mother, yet it is a marriage context and to the front of this context, in the front of this marriage, we have Jesus who does something that is the prerogative of the bridegroom. You know what he does in this story that was really the right of the bridegroom to do, or the duty of the bridegroom to do? What? Provide the wine. And yet, the bridegroom at this wedding, who remains unnamed in the background, he’s not so good at that. He is not so good at fulfilling his bridegroomial duties. That’s an adjective I came up with myself. If anybody knows of a legitimate word that means that, let me know, but I’ve always been forced to use “bridegroomial”. Anyway, Jesus takes on those bridegroomial prerogatives and provides the wine. So what’s being shown here? Jesus is new Adam to Mary, new Eve, new mother of the living. They come to the front and Mary is a type of the bride, the church, and Christ here IS the bridegroom; he is the bridegroom of what scholars call the eschatological wedding banquet, the final wedding banquet in the last days when we are face to face with God, because Jesus is God himself. When we look upon him we see the Father. So it’s the marriage feast of the last times. So that’s where the nuptial imagery begins with the Gospel of John, it is really at the wedding at Cana, where Jesus and Mary come forward as kind of the new Adam and the new Eve, the new bridegroom and new type of the bride in John 2. So either 6th day Or 7th day because genesis1:5 start with evening first & there was morning later leads us to the perfect number 7 in marriage which we also know in Revelation chapters as the perfect union with our Lord in church matrimony.
Here is the sequence by which I understand it (early Church Fathers helped!) Day 1: The Baptist responds to the scribes, " 26 John answered them, “I baptize with water; but among you stands one whom you do not know, 27 even he who comes after me, the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” Day 2: The Baptist points out Jesus: 29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" Day 3: 43 The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. And he found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” NOTE: From where Jesus was in Judea to Cana in Galilee is about 27 miles (a 3 day journey by foot). Thus: the 3 days mentioned in John 2:1 refers from the departure to their arrival at Cana. The arrival on the 6th day, which corresponds with the wedding day, consequently allowed the Church Fathers to contrast Eve's disobedience on Day 6 of creation with Mary's obedience at Cana ("Do whatever he tells you") on the 6th day of John's Gospel! This comparison contributed to early Church Fathers naming Mary, the New Eve! That's a lot of brain drain!
