Breaking the Word: Still Or Sparkling?

Sunday, January 19, 2025

Still Or Sparkling?

2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)

Readings: Isaiah 62:1-5; Psalm 95 (96):1-3, 7-10; 1 Corinthians 12:4-11; John 2:1-11

Picture: By Shayna Douglas on Unsplash

Still or sparkling? My dear friends, if the waiter in a restaurant asks you this question, how would you respond? How do you prefer your water? Still or sparkling? Sparkling water, as we know, is just a fancy name for water with bubbles in it. Sparkling water is fizzy. Still water is flat… And it’s not just water that can be fizzy or flat. Isn’t life the same as well? Aren’t there moments or periods when life seems to bubble with meaning and purpose, making it feel truly worth living? And aren’t there also times when life feels tediously empty, when we may even struggle to find a reason to stay alive?

Like water, life can feel fizzy or flat. But with one important difference. Although sparkling water can be fun to drink, we don’t really need the fizz to survive. Even flat water can keep us alive. But isn’t it a terrible thing to have to live without meaning and purpose? Isn’t this one of the reasons why we celebrate special occasions, like birthdays, weddings and anniversaries? More than just a chance to take a break from our routine, to let our hair down, and to have some fun, don’t such celebrations help us recall how meaningful life truly is? Perhaps this is why we often mark such occasions by drinking not just fizzy sodas, but also intoxicating wines. And on really special occasions, we may even have some champagne, which is both fizzy and intoxicating.

All of which may help us ponder the deeper significance of what we find in our scriptures today. The first reading is addressed to a broken and exiled people. A people whose land has been conquered, and whose Temple destroyed. The same land that the Lord their God had given their ancestors as a pledge of fidelity. The same Temple in which the Lord their God had promised to live among them forever. These key symbols of their identity as a people, these precious things that had given their life its meaning and purpose, have both been painfully stripped away. To this shattered and scattered people, God addresses a word of deep consolation. Promising a new beginning. A time when their glory will again shine out. When God will gather them back, like a bridegroom joyously embracing his radiant new bride.

We Christians believe that this promise finds its fulfilment in Jesus. Through his Dying and Rising, all of creation is gathered into the warmth of God’s loving embrace. This is what gives our life its deepest meaning. That whatever our current circumstances––however glorious our successes or agonising our failures, whether we are still young and energetic or already considered past our prime––we all continue to be nourished and sustained by the love of God. For with the outstretched arms of Jesus on the Cross, God embraces us as members of the Church, Christ’s beloved Body and Bride. Isn’t this what we celebrate at every Mass?

And isn’t this why it’s fitting that the first sign Jesus performs, to let his glory be seen, takes place at a wedding? By turning water into wine, Jesus doesn’t just save face for his hosts, and preserve the festive joy of their celebration. More than that, the miracle also points to how the Lord’s glorious Sacrifice on the Cross brings meaning and purpose to the lives of all who believe in him. All who choose to enter his loving and merciful embrace. Isn’t this the deeper connection between the transformation of water into wine, and the hour of the Lord’s glorious Sacrifice on the Cross?

Yet when the Lord reveals his glory at Cana, not many actually see and recognise it. Although the steward, and presumably the guests, get to enjoy the quality of the wine, they have no idea as to its true origin. Only the Lord’s Blessed Mother, the servants, and his disciples know… By nudging Jesus to perform his first sign, his Mother, in effect, hastens his Death, giving birth to him not just biologically, but also in faith. Then, by carefully obeying his instructions, the servants help facilitate the revelation of his glory. And, by believing in him, his disciples allow themselves to enter ever more deeply into the warmth of God’s embrace. Belief, obedience and birth. Three key steps by which true meaning and purpose is found in Christ. Steps that the Spirit of God empowers us to take. The same Spirit who, the second reading tells us, distributes different gifts to different people.

Belief, obedience and birth. Isn’t it especially important for us to recall and to retrace these steps today? When many often seem to endure lives that feel terribly flat and boring? Either because we’re too busy or exhausted to ponder deeper things, or because we’ve lost whatever it was that gave our life its meaning. Such as an occupation or a relationship, a cherished ability or a prized possession…

So still or sparkling? Sisters and brothers, if the Lord were to ask us this question, how would we respond today?

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Breaking News: Ordinary Time

Apart from those seasons having their own distinctive character, thirty-three or thirty-four weeks remain in the yearly cycle that do not celebrate a specific aspect of the mystery of Christ. Rather, especially on the Sundays, they are devoted to the mystery of Christ in all its aspects. This period is known as Ordinary Time. Ordinary Time begins on Monday after the Sunday following 6 January and continues until Tuesday before Ash Wednesday inclusive. It begins again on Monday after Pentecost and ends before Evening Prayer I of the First Sunday of Advent. ~ General Norms for the Liturgical Year & Calendar, nn 43-44

From 36th Jesuit General Congregation

It is our union with one another in Christ that testifies to the Good News more powerfully than our competences and abilities.... In our individualistic and competitive age, we should remember that the community plays a very special role since it is a privileged place of apostolic discernment.... The Jesuit community is a concrete space in which we live as friends in the Lord. This life together is always at the service of mission, but because these fraternal bonds proclaim the Gospel, it is itself a mission. –Companions in a Mission of Reconciliation and Justice (CMRJ), nn. 7-9.

With the poor, we can learn what hope and courage mean.... In our communities and apostolates, we hear the call to rediscover hospitality to strangers, to the young, to the poor, and to those who are persecuted. Christ himself teaches us this hospitality. –CMRJ, nn. 15-16.

At the heart of Ignatian spirituality is the transforming encounter with the mercy of God in Christ that moves us to a generous personal response. The experience of the merciful gaze of God on our weakness and sinfulness humbles us and fills us with gratitude, helping us to become compassionate ministers to all.... For us Jesuits, compassion is action, an action discerned together. Yet we know that there is no authentic familiarity with God if we do not allow ourselves to be moved to compassion and action by an encounter with the Christ who is revealed in the suffering, vulnerable faces of people, indeed in the suffering of creation. –CMRJ, nn. 19-20.

(T)he Society must respond more decisively to the Church’s call for a new evangelization, giving special emphasis to ministry to and with the young and with families.... A special gift Jesuits and the Ignatian family have to offer to the Church and her mission of evangelization is Ignatian spirituality, which facilitates the experience of God and can therefore greatly help the process of personal and communal conversion. –CMRJ, nn. 22-23.

In many societies, there is an increased level of conflict and polarization, which often gives rise to violence that is all the more appalling because it is motivated and justified by distorted religious convictions. In such situations, Jesuits, along with all who seek the common good, are called to contribute from their religious-spiritual traditions towards the building of peace, on local and global levels. –CMRJ, n. 28.

Pope Francis has emphasized the fundamental connection between the environmental crisis and the social crisis in which we live today. Poverty, social exclusion, and marginalization are linked with environmental degradation. These are not separate crises but one crisis that is a symptom of something much deeper: the flawed way societies and economies are organised. The current economic system with its predatory orientation discards natural resources as well as people. For this reason, Pope Francis insists that the only adequate solution must be a radical one. The direction of development must be altered if it is to be sustainable. We Jesuits are called to help heal a broken world, promoting a new way of producing and consuming, which puts God’s creation at the center.... The multifaceted challenge of caring for our common home calls for a multifaceted response from the Society. We begin by changing our personal and community lifestyles, adopting behaviour coherent with our desire for reconciliation with creation. – CMRJ, nn. 29-30

From 35th Jesuit General Congregation

From General Congregation 35

By sending us to 'those physical and spiritual places which others do not or have difficulty reaching,' the Pope entrusts to us the task to 'build bridges of understanding and dialogue,' according to the best tradition of the Society, in the diversity of its ministries.
- Decree With Renewed Fervor and Dynamism, n. 6

To be missioned to this work 'at the New Frontiers of our times' always requires that one also be rooted at the very heart of the Church. This tension, specific to the Ignatian charism, opens the way to true creative fidelity.
- Decree With Renewed Fervor and Dynamism, n. 13

In every mission that we carry out, we seek only to be where (Christ) sends us. The grace we receive as Jesuits is to be and to go with him, looking on the world with his eyes, loving it with his heart and entering into its depths with his unending compassion.
- Decree on Identity, n. 15

For ultimately, there is no reality that is only profane for those who know how to look. We must communicate this look and provide a pedagogy inspired by the Spiritual Exercises, that carries people - especially the young - into it.
- Decree on Identity, n. 10

Our ministries of proclamation of the Word and the celebration of the Life of Christ in the sacraments continue to be fundamental for our mission and our lives together as Jesuits.
- Decree on Mission, n. 19

The complexity of the problems we face and the richness of the opportunities offered demand that we engage in building bridges between rich and poor and establishing advocacy links of mutual support between those who hold political power and those who find it difficult to voice their interests. Our intellectual apostolate provides an inestimable help in setting up these bridges, offering us new ways of understanding in depth the mechanism and links among our present problems.
- Decree on Mission, n. 28

Jesuit community is not just for mission, it is itself mission.
- Decree on Mission, n. 41

In this global context it is important to highlight the extraordinary potential represented by our character as an international and multicultural body. Acting consistently with this character can not only enhance the apostolic effectiveness of our work but in a fragmented and divided world it can witness to the reconciliation in solidarity of all the children of God.
- Decree on Mission, n. 43

Faith in Jesus Christ teaches us that self-realization comes from self-giving and that freedom is not so much the power to choose as the power to order our choices toward love. At the same time, love for Jesus Christ and the desire to follow him call us to trusting commitment. Commitment to the Word Incarnate cannot be separated from commitment to the concrete manifestations of the Word that are at the center of our lives, the Church and the Society which exists to serve the Church.
- Decree on Obedience, n. 19

Sunday, January 19, 2025

Still Or Sparkling?

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