My guess would be that in many of the Catholic Churches throughout the world today you would hear a homily on marriage, but I said to myself, what do I, a 79-year old life-long bachelor, what do I know about marriage?  Only what I observed in my parents, in my married brothers and sisters, and what I’ve learned from you and people like you.  And what I have learned is that marriage can be a wonderfully fulfilling experience bringing great joy, comfort, a sense of stability, a personal growth; but that it also involves a lot of hard work.  Indeed you have told me that it calls for hard work every day.  It calls for you making a decision every day to love another human being unconditionally. 

I have studied the theology of marriage, but the Church teaches that marriage is a sacrament because it is representative of the love of Christ for his Church and that the graces of this sacrament give you the grace, the strength, the patience to do the hard work.  And, in fact, that your knowledge of God’s love will now come from the fact that you see yourself loved unconditionally by another human being and so can more easily believe that you’re loved unconditionally by God who is love itself.  And there ends my homily on marriage.  (Laughter)

The Gospel today is not about marriage, it is about a wedding reception.  And the first thing that strikes us is something that is very, very traditionally Catholic and, that is, the relationship between Jesus and Mary, between a mother and a son.  It bolsters our traditionally Catholic practice of asking Mary to intercede for us with her son, Jesus.  Now, Mary had absolutely no doubt that Jesus would do something about the shortage of wine and so she tells the servers -- “do whatever he tells you.”  Now, if we want Mary to intercede with Jesus for us, and indeed we should want that, well, we better be prepared to hear the same thing.  Do whatever he tells you. 

As followers of Jesus we are invited and, indeed, we are commanded and we’re begged, we’re asked to do what he commands us -- to try to live out his ideals, his message, his way of dealing with other people.  But I think that this Gospel above all is talking about the extraordinary graciousness of God.  A God that does not stint on generosity, a God that does not do things by half, a God whose bounty is absolutely overflowing.  They have no wine.  Okay, I’ll do something about it.  How much do they need?  Oh, about 50 gallons.  Oh, not at all, we’ll make it 150.  Why be stingy?  Well, you know, they’re all a little bit broke already so, you know a $2 buck Chuck would do.  (Laughter)  Not at all.  We can’t do that.  Have to give them the very best, the best of Napa Valley Cabernet.  Only the best will do for these people.  That’s God!  That’s our God!  Only the best will do for my people.  When we read this Gospel passage can anyone ever again doubt the bountiful generosity of our God?  God in many ways revealed to his chosen people, the Jews, his goodness and his love. 

As we read in the passage from Isaiah 62, “Nations shall behold your vindication; you shall be a glorious crown in the hand of the Lord.  No more shall people call you forsaken or your land desolate, you shall be called my delight.”  Isn’t it wonderful that God calls his people “my delight”?  That God delights in his people and we Christians, followers of the Jew Jesus; well, we’re going to say “we’re your people too.  And you take delight in us”.  God takes delight in you.  Doesn’t that make you feel good?  That God cares about you, delights in you, that you’re precious in God’s eyes, that God takes delight in our human joys, our human celebrations, that God wants us to be happy, that we are important, indeed precious in God’s eyes.

We see this illustrated in the passage we read from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians where God abundantly through the spirit, abundantly gives his gifts to his people as individuals and as a community.  Just pours out his blessings upon them.  It is so easy for us to get down on ourselves and there are many, many good reasons for us at times to get down on ourselves, our many failures, our failure to love as generously as we should, our failures in patience, our failures in speech, and our failures in forgiveness.  We could very easily get depressed about ourselves and think that we are pretty worthless in God’s eyes, but the message I am getting from the Gospel today that that’s not right.  That, in fact, the very opposite is true, that we are important to God, that God is willing to pour out his gifts upon us, his graces, whatever we need to lead a good Christian life.  He is concerned about us.  We may have been drinking inferior wine up till now, not really believing in God’s precious love for each one of us, but let the future be different.  If you are ever tempted to be depressed or feel bad about yourself or feel that you are pretty worthless, I want you to picture to yourself six great big stone jars of the most wonderful wine of God’s love and it is there for you to drink.  It is there for all of us to drink this beautiful wine of God’s love.  So what are we to do, well, I suggest that we go out today and get drunk on God’s love.  (Laughter)
Amen

rjs