The Labor of Love – 2nd Sunday In Ordinary Time – Sermon by Father Levine

Fr. Joseph Levine; Holy Family Catholic Church and Missions, Burns, Oregon; January 19, 2025

At the wedding at Cana there is, of course, a bride and a groom, but we do not know their names. The lack of a name allows us easily to place any bride and groom into the scene, or, the other way around, the bride and groom at Cana can stand for any bride and groom through the course of history.

The impending disaster of their wedding feast, of which they are blissfully ignorant, and which is prevented by the intervention of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the miracle wrought by Jesus, is a disaster that threatens not just wedding banquets, but the whole of married life, the whole of human life, from the time of Adam and Eve to this day.

Last Sunday I observed that there is nothing that belongs to this world so beautiful as marriage, but perhaps I should have been more precise and said: “… so beautiful as a happy marriage.”

They have no wine. Something is lacking that is required for the joy of a wedding feast and, since the time of Adam and Eve, apart from the miracle wrought by Jesus, something is lacking in married life, something needed for marriage to be able to fulfill its promise of happiness and joy.

Consider the Old Testament, before the miracle of Cana. The Psalmist proclaims the man who fears the Lord is blessed, his wife like a fruitful vine in his house, his children like shoots of olive around the table. (Ps 128[127]:1,3) The book of Proverbs exhorts a man to rejoice in the wife of [his] youth, a lovely hind, a graceful doe. Let her affection fill you at all times with delight. (Pr 15:18-19) But there are many dangers that lie in wait, more than capable of destroying marital felicity. Without going into detail, when we turn to the histories of the Old Testament we might well be excused were we to think that marital felicity was the exception rather than the rule.

It is no secret that in our own time marriage has fallen into great disarray, to say the least. In Old Testament times there was polygamy, but now divorce has made it common for people to have multiple wives (or husbands) not at the same time, but one after the other. Still, that is a matter of husbands and wives. I will not enter into the deformation that denies that a man and woman are necessary for marriage. Finally, many young people seem to have given up on marriage altogether. In 1980 just 6% of 40-year-olds had never been married; now the number is more like 25%. In the Middles Ages the percentage might have been even higher but that was because people were filling monasteries and convents.

Well, if we were to imagine Jesus sitting at the right hand of the Father and the Blessed Virgin sitting next to him, she must be saying, They have no wine.

The wine that has been lacking since the time of Adam and Eve and which is only remedied by the miracle of Jesus, is the wine of divine grace lost due to Adam’s sin.

How does this impact marriage?

A man and a woman when the marry, if they have anything that remotely resembles a right intention, are seeking happiness in mutual love. They desire a love that is strong, stable, and lasting. They are capable of desiring such a love, but they are often unaware of the lack that spells disaster. You see, human love, as such, is not strong, stable, and lasting, but weak, changeable, and passing. Human love is also infected by egoism simply because we are weak, needy, and sinful creatures. Human love is not salvific, though people often make that mistake, not just once or twice, but over and over, as the hurt, disappointment, and disillusionment grow with each failure.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Even without religious faith, the warmth and kindness of human love can, in limited ways, cause life to flourish; the natural love of spouses can bring flourishing and joy to their lives; the love of parents enables children to grow and flourish in many ways. There are some also who are sufficiently strong to persevere for their whole life in marriage, apparently on nothing more than their own strength. All this belongs to the good of nature, which also comes from God who created us in the first place. Even so, that seems to be the exception rather than the rule, especially in the world today.

More to the point, as generous as natural spousal love can be, there is one place in which its generosity nearly always balks: namely, in the face of their primary mission to collaborate with God in bringing children into the world, created in his image. Most want some control in this matter and now will even have recourse to contraceptive means that violate the law of God and the very nature of the marital act. Very few are ready, without reserve, simply to accept the children God gives them.

The Second Vatican Council, commenting on the words “be fruitful and multiply,” (Gen 1:28) taught: “While not making the other purposes of matrimony of less account, the true practice of conjugal love, and the whole meaning of the family life which results from it, have this aim: that the couple be ready with stout hearts to cooperate with the love of the Creator and the Savior, who through them will enlarge and enrich His own family day by day.” (Gaudium et Spes, 50)

Yes, such generosity is difficult. Yes, the challenges are immense. Between World War I and World War II, the Irish Dominican priest, Fr. Vincent McNabb held that the economic structure in Britain was such that most married couples lived in a proximate occasion of sin and only by means of heroic virtue could they be faithful to God’s plan for the procreation and education of children. Circumstances in the United States in the 21^st century are a bit different, but I think the same judgment regarding economic structure holds, while there are now many additional social and political obstacles. In other words, today, heroic virtue is necessary to remain faithful to God. Mediocrity is not an option.

So back to my point: human love, as such, is not strong, stable, and lasting, but weak, changeable, and passing. That is human love – a wedding feast without wine – but divine love is indeed strong, stable, and lasting. The heroic generosity of divine love, then, is needed to make marriage prosper, to avoid the disaster of joyless water at a wedding feast.

Before speaking about the conversion of the water into wine in the sacrament of marriage, I should make a comment on Jesus’ answer to his Blessed Mother.

I think a literal translation is more helpful: What is it to me and to you, Woman; my hour has not yet come? First of all, by addressing his Mother as “Woman”, Jesus is identifying her as the woman prophesied in Genesis, I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring; he shall crush your head while you strike at his heel. (Gen 3:15) The heel is the sacred humanity of Jesus Christ that will be nailed to the Cross. Jesus is in effect asking his Mother, “Do you understand what working this miracle will cost me? Are you willing to pay the price and to take part in my work of Redemption, standing by my Cross?” This also teaches us the conversion of water into wine is the fruit of Jesus’ death on the Cross.

Now, regarding the sacrament of marriage. Marriage has existed from the time of Adam, but Jesus has elevated it to become a sacrament of grace. Human marriage, since the time of Adam, is forever threatened by the lack of wine, the lack of divine grace. By making marriage a sacrament among the baptized, Jesus remedies that situation, making the very bond of marriage to be a source of grace. The sacrament imparts to a marriage strength, stability, and permanence such as it never had before, and, at the same time gives to the spouses the grace to share in the strong, stable, and permanent love of God, needed for marriage to fulfill its promise.

We may then wonder why so many Christian marriages turn out badly. The problem is not with sacrament. The key is for married couples to really access and live from the grace of the sacrament. That means listening to the Blessed Virgin when she says, Do whatever he tells you.

The miracle at Cana is remarkable because unlike any other miracle of Jesus it requires some serious human collaboration. The miracle at Cana teaches us the law of human collaboration with God’s grace. “Fill the jars with water”. Six stone water jars, each holding twenty to thirty gallons. The water needed to be drawn from a well or cistern, with the help at most of a pulley, and carried by hand in smaller vessels to the stone jars. There was some serious labor involved here. There is serious labor involved in obeying the commandments of God. The servants at the wedding feast could have easily thought to themselves, “What good will it do to fill the jars with water when wine is needed.” Very often people think – especially in matters regarding marriage – that it will do no good to obey the commandments of God because they are not very practical, they don’t put food on the table.

The miracle at Cana shows us that while divine grace is available for us – on tap as it were, in abundance – we often do not get to taste the wine because we do not put our trust in God nor are we generous in the effort required to keep his commandments.

Yes, it is hard, especially when you have hurt been over and over. Life is hard, but it is only when we learn to give the effort, trust in God, and meet the challenge of the difficulty that we will be able to taste the wine.

St. Ignatius of Loyola gave us a prayer for generosity: “Eternal Word, only begotten Son of God: Teach me to be generous. Teach me to serve you as you deserve. To give without counting the cost, to fight heedless of wounds, to labor without seeking rest, to sacrifice myself without thought of any reward, save the knowledge that I have done your will. Amen.”

St. Therese of Lisieux gives the example of a little girl who wants to climb the stairs to her mother who is at the top but is too weak even to make the first step. She keeps trying and failing until her mother, delighted with her daughter, pleased by her effort, descends the stairs and then takes the child to the top in her arms.

We must make the effort, over and over, without giving up hope; only then will we experience the help of God that enables us to do what is impossible to our feeble strength.

But, someone might object, at Cana all the labor was on the part of the servants, not the bride and groom. The bride and groom just enjoyed the benefit of the miracle.

Remember that the bride and groom were not named. That allows them to stand not only for every bride and groom, it allows them also to stand for Christ, the Divine Bridegroom, and his Bride, the Church.

A husband and wife, by their married love, are meant to give to the world a visible sign of the greater reality, the love of Christ and his Church. The unbreakable bond between Christ and his Church makes the sacramental bond indissoluble, except by death, and imparts to the spouses the grace to persevere to death in their love. By their faithful love the spouses in turn show forth to the world the undying love of Christ.

A sacramental marriage cannot be dissolved, but it can only attain its promise if the spouses are willing to help each other on the pilgrim path to the heavenly kingdom and to serve the greater reality, the marriage feast of Christ and his Church, the marriage feast in which we participate in the holy sacrifice of the Mass and holy communion, the sacrificial banquet of the greatest love, the bond that is not dissolved by death but reaches to the eternal throne of God.