2C19.   Isaiah 62:1-5.  Isaiah looks forward to the return of the Hebrew captives to Israel.  “So shall your God rejoice in you” as his people returns to his embrace as his bride.  What great things God will do for his people because his love for them is so great!

John 2:1-11.  When reading John’s gospel, it is absolutely necessary to realize that, more often than not, he intentionally writes with two levels of meaning.  First there is the obvious first meaning or understanding that the text is speaking on a physical, everyday layer of meaning, i.e. the text says just what the common understanding is and nothing more or less.  However, then John the Evangelist expects us to delve into the deeper, more profound meaning he really wants us to perceive.  From the first reading we can see that God wants to see his relationship to his people as a marriage that involves the deep caring that the groom should have for his bride and not just as two people passing each other on the street.  In the coming of Jesus into the world God is forming a new bride whom he wishes to marry in yet a deeper love than before.  Returning to the first obvious level of meaning we should recognize that the disciples of Jesus were, what I refer to, as a lower blue-collar class of hard working people who were used to living a hard and hardy style of life.  In other words, there is a good chance that the reason why the feast ran short of wine was that Jesus’ disciples drank most of it.  Mary is confronting her son with the problem of the lack of wine because she feels he has the responsibility to deal with the shortage that his disciples have created.  At first he is reluctant because he seems to feel that “My hour has not yet come” to work miracles.  Yet Mary persists by saying to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”  I feel that Jesus still remains obedient to his Mother and to God the Father who speaks through Mary.  Jesus superabundantly provides for the wine that ran short by turning six stone jars filled with water into 120 to 180 gallons of wine, almost 900 bottles full.  There is a deeper level of meaning to be uncovered in this stupendous miracle.  I believe that Jesus works this miracle at the beginning of his ministry to say that, what was the water of the Old Covenant, he now turns into rich, fine wine, the infinite abundance of his redemptive love that is the New Covenant that Jesus initiates in his ministry. Jesus brings to the world a love that is akin to a deep love a bridegroom has for his bride to make something, new, deeper and better. The headwaiter remarks, “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 thereby announces that he is taking what was good in the Old Testament times and making it infinitely better by his ministry.  John does not relate the reaction of Jesus’ disciples to this miracle directly but indirectly when writes, “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.”

1 Corinthians 12:4-11.   “There are different workings (spiritual gifts or service) but the same God who produces all of them in everyone.”  “One and the same Spirit produces all of these (spiritual gifts), distributing them individually to each person as he wishes.”  Through his ministry Jesus is building a new Holy People of God through the work of the Holy Spirit that includes all peoples and not just Jews.  Psalm 96 says, “Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all you lands.” “Tell his glory among all the nations; among all peoples, his wondrous deeds.”  Through Jesus’ ministry God’s power flowed then and now into all peoples to build his new Church, to create his new bride.

FamC21.    1 Samuel 1:20-22, 24-28.  Hannah, unable to bear a child, made a special prayer to God that she be able to bear a son.  God answered her prayer.  Hannah offered her son Samuel as one set aside to serve the Lord in whatever special way He desired.  Hannah said: “As long as he lives, he shall be dedicated to the Lord.”  Also one day Jesus himself would leave his home in Nazareth to serve God his Father in a very special way.

Luke 2:41-52. Here Jesus was twelve years old, the age that a boy traditionally is considered to be maturing into becoming a man.  Jesus recognizes that not only are Mary and Joseph his earthly parents but also that God is his heavenly Father.  Not only did Jesus have an earthly home in Nazareth but also had a home in the Jerusalem temple where divinity made its earthly home.  My own understanding of this event is that the Holy Spirit inspired Jesus to be mindful of the ministry that one day he would be called to.  One sign that the Spirit had already been preparing him for his ministry was that the teachers or rabbis in the temple “were astounded at his understanding and his answers.”  Jesus was both human and divine.  So as to allow Jesus to develop as a genuine human being, his divinity had to step aside to let him mature naturally, as a creature of this world.  “And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man.”  For her part Mary found it quite challenging to raise Jesus, ‘God made man’.   Mary, “his mother, kept all these things in her heart.”

1 John 3:1-2, 21-24.  “Beloved: See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God.”  As children of God we are members of God’s family who are given the privilege of calling God our Father. (Matthew 6:9)  Genesis 1:27a&b says, “God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him.” We do not know now but “when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”  “Those who keep his commandments (that is “do what pleases him”) remain in him, and he in them, and the way we know that he remains in us is from the Spirit he gave us.”  Even while we are natural beings or creatures of this earth, we are called to live also supernaturally or holy.  The Holy Spirit gives us the breathe of divine life daily, so that, despite the fact that we are creatures of earth, we already have something of heaven in us because we live as God’s children.

FAMC18.   1 Samuel 1:20-22, 24-28.   God was always active and involved in the lives of his Chosen People, the Israelites.   He guided them through the prophets he personally appointed and raised up.  In order to understand this first reading please read the first chapter of the book of Samuel.  God answers the prayer of Hannah by allowing her to bear a son, Samuel.  Through Samuel, God was to lead King David and his People to be a great nation.  In the third reading God gives Mary a son Jesus to lead the peoples of all times to heaven.

Luke 2:41-52.   Mary and Joseph are referred to as Jesus’ parents because Joseph is Jesus’ father by adoption.  Joseph is, in effect, Jesus’ earthly father.  God is still Jesus’s heavenly father but in part exercises his fatherly care through Joseph while Joseph is still alive.  I believe this incident of the Holy Family in Jerusalem has been given in the Scriptures to further confirm that Jesus was both thoroughly human as well as thoroughly divine.  Jesus’ divinity had to carefully keep enough of a distance from his humanity to allow his humanity to be fully human because his divinity is so incredibly powerful that his humanity would have been overwhelmed, if his divinity became too involved with his humanity.  Around the age of twelve a Hebrew boy can celebrate his ceremonial age of becoming a man, his bar-mitzvah, fully responsible to follow the Law.  Jesus in his humanness had achieved a certain level of maturity by the age of twelve that he was able to sit “in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions,” to the extent that “all who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers.”  However, at the age of twelve he had not yet gained the mindfulness to think of asking his parents for the permission to remain in Jerusalem.  In no way did Jesus mean to reject obedience to his parents but was simply being thoughtless in his humanity.  He was to grow yet further in his maturation process. This passage continues on saying, “He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them.” This gospel finishes by saying, “And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man.”  In his divinity he was all-knowing and so could never learn more but in his humanity he needed to and did learn more and more as he grew older and older.

1 John 3:1-2, 21-24.  “Beloved: See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God.”  In our liturgy at the beginning of the ‘Our Father’ prayer it says, “We dare to say, Our Father.”  How can we be so bold to call the Almighty Creator, Our Father’?  Jesus, his son, made it clear that his Father wants to be a loving, caring Father, but also a demanding Father to us.  His demand is that “we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another just as he commanded us.  Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them.”  By being obedient to his will, which means the same as keeping his commandments, we become his children and he, our Father.  We are living in him and he; in us; he is our home and we are his home. In other words, we are at home with the Lord daily, sharing endless fellowship with the Lord, much in the same way we feel at home with our families, friends and fellow workers.  The Holy Spirit enables us to be his obedient children, who grow in holiness daily, developing more and more in his likeness as his children, even while we live in a world that rejects God as our Father.

“We do not know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”  I believe that means that, as God took our humanity through Mary, when we go to live as God’s children in heaven, he will share with us, in some way or another that is not known to us now, some of his divinity.

Adv4C21.   Micah 5:1-4a.  Micah the prophet proclaims that “from you (Bethlehem-Ephrathah) shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel.”  We understand that that one is Jesus, the Christ or Messiah.

Luke 1:39-45.  Mary, just hearing that she will bear the Messiah, hastens to help Elizabeth to give birth in her old age.  However, Elizabeth, despite her own miraculous pregnancy, is brought by the Holy Spirit to bring Mary to recognize what an earth shattering, heaven proclaiming event has happened to her.  “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”  How beyond anything that could be imaginable was what the Lord had done through Mary, the lowliest of the lowly.  God had made her the mother of God made man, of divinity to be human.

Hebrews 10:5-10.   “Sacrifices and offering (of animals) you did not desire.” Instead we are the ones, in union with Christ, who are given up to God the Father.  “We have been consecrated through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”  Jesus is taking us daily from our earthliness into his heavenliness, from our humanity to share in his divinity, to be a people graced by God.  He assumed our humanity to walk us daily into his divinity.

 

Adv4C18.     Micah 5:1-4a.   The Lord announces to Bethlehem, where David was born, “from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel; whose origin is from of old, from ancient times.”  “He shall stand firm and shepherd his flock by the strength of the Lord.”  “His greatness shall reach to the ends of the earth; he shall be peace.”  In 2 Samuel 7:12-13, Psalm 89 & Psalm 132:11-12, God declared that an heir of David would rule forever.  We understand that person to be Jesus the Christ.

Luke 1:39-45.  Mary has just been told, right after she accepted her God-given assignment to be the Mother of God-made-man, that Elizabeth in her old age is to bear a child. She immediately recognizes that Elizabeth will need help.  The sixth-month old child in Elizabeth’s womb is so Spirit-filled he “leaped in her womb,” because God-made-man has arrived in Mary’s womb.  “Elizabeth, filled with the holy Spirit,” blesses Mary and her awesome, divine child and expresses her astonishment that Mary, despite her spectacular calling has come to help Elizabeth in her lowliness.  Elizabeth says, “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”  Mary then, after she has answered her call to duty to Elizabeth, rejoices that God “has looked upon his handmaid’s lowliness” to rejoice that “the Mighty One has done great things for” her.  It seems to me that Mary had been long-suffering in her unrecognized closeness to God amidst many others who were of no account in the eyes of God yet held in high esteem by many in this world.  They were ones who were “arrogant of mind and heart” and others rich in the things of this earth.  Mary had put her life in the hands of God and not of this earth.  God not only was helping Israel his servant but also Mary his handmaid, “remembering his mercy,” for those who “have favor with God.”

Hebrews 10:5-10.   “When Christ came into the world,” God the Father was not looking for just another Old Testament/Covenant offering.  He desired to show the infinite depths of his love for the whole world. Jesus, both divine and human, was to be the once-and-for-all offering.  God “takes away the first to establish the second” Covenant.   God  became a helpless, tiny baby to purposely put himself in the hands of those who would contribute to his handing himself up as a sacrificial redemption for our sins to God the Father.   His incarnation and birth into humanity and then death on the cross were one seamless act of redemption.  In a sense the Annunciation/Incarnation, celebrated on March 25 which tends to fall around Holy Week, is an integral part of Holy Week as one seamless act of redemption.  He became flesh (John 1:14) so to offer himself up on the cross in the flesh (1 Timothy 2:5-6a) (Rom 6:8).

Adv3C21.    Zephaniah 3:14-18a.    “Shout for joy, O daughter Zion!” “The Lord has removed his judgment against you.”  “He will rejoice over you with gladness, and renew you in his love.”  This is appointed by the Church to be the Sunday to rejoice in Jesus who is our joy!

Luke 3:10-18.  John the Baptist calls for a change of heart and mind from being self-centered to being compassionate and loving as is our God.  To be a follower of Jesus we need to think as God thinks with love for all.  This world calls us to be centered in ourselves; God’s mind set is to love even to the cross.  Christianity is a fundamental change in thinking and living.  John the Baptist proclaimed the coming the One who would give us the Holy Spirit as the one who would move us to live as heavenly beings while we are still here on earth.  He is the fire of divine life within our earthly bodies.  If that fire is not our life, there is another fire that will consume and devour whoever chooses not to be filled with God’s divine life.  Choose life by living united to the source of life, the God who loves us.

Philippians 4:4-7.  Joy is an ongoing state of living in the Lord.  Worry is an ongoing state of living as a partially godless self-centered being this world.  Despair is an ongoing state of one who seeks living totally without God.  When you                             “make your requests known to God, the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”  Joy and peace are God’s gift to us who live in him daily.  Turmoil and trouble without peace and strength are the hallmarks of a Godless life.

Adv3C18.  Zephaniah 3:14-18a.  “Shout for joy, O daughter Zion!  Sing joyfully, O Israel! Be glad with all your heart!”  “The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a mighty savior; he will rejoice over you with gladness and renew you in his love.”  The people of Judah at that time had for the most part abandoned the practice of the Torah and any faithfulness to the God of Israel.  The prophet Zephaniah seeks to strengthen those who were still loyal to God by encouraging them to rejoice in the God who was still loyal to them.

Luke 3:10-18.  In Luke 3:8a, John the Baptist says, “Produce good fruits as evidence of your repentance.”  He tells those who have more than enough, to share; to tax collectors, be fair; to soldiers, do not be unjust.       Then John says that the Messiah is coming who will baptize them “with fire with the Holy Spirit and fire” and not just water as he does.  The Holy Spirit is to bring repentance and holiness; the unquenchable fire, to cleanse the world of sinfulness.

Philippians 4:4-7.  The Entrance Chant verse for this Sunday says: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say rejoice.  Indeed, the Lord is near.”  Since the word ‘rejoice’ in Latin is ‘Gaudete’, this Sunday from the times Latin was the language used in the Mass has been called ‘Gaudete Sunday’.  Where there is Jesus, as the Lord of one’s life, there is joy even in times of suffering.  Paul goes on to write: “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.  Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”  When we live our lives out of the giving hand of God, then we have it all, we will never lack anything.

Responsorial Psalm from Isaiah 12:2-3, 4, 5-6.  “Cry out with joy and gladness: for among you is the great and Holy One of Israel.”  “With joy you will draw water at the fountain of salvation.”  The water that the Lord gives us at the fountain of salvation is a share in his holiness that entitles us to live with him in his household of heaven with his family, the saints.

Adv2C21.     Baruch 5:1-9.   The prophet Baruch calls upon Jerusalem to rejoice because God will bring the Hebrews back from captivity, “for God is leading Israel in joy by the light of his glory.”

Psalm 126 goes on to see the captives actually returning to Jerusalem with the Hebrews saying, “The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.”

Luke 3:1-6.  John the Baptist prepares the way of the Lord Jesus by “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”  “All flesh shall see the salvation of God.”  God was to come into our world as one of us humans to bring the love of his divinity to us in way we could understand.  In the Old Testament God’s presence brought joy to his people.   That joy is brought to a pinnacle in the New Testament in the person of Jesus, God made man.  We rejoice that he frees us from our captivity to sin so that we may be united to him in his holiness.

Philippians 1:4-6, 8-11.  Paul wrote to the Philippians: “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it.”  The Lord does great things so that we all “may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.”  The Lord enables us to pass through a world of seductive temptations to one day be totally united to him in heaven.