Reflection on the Sunday Lectionary Readings
Second Sunday of Ordinary Time
Readings
When my husband Ben
and I were married in 1988 Sr. Macrina Scott, the founder of Denver’s
outstanding Catholic Biblical School, was kind enough to carry home for us a
small clay jar which she bought in a gift shop in Cana, Galilee during a
pilgrimage there. Years later Ben
and I visited Cana ourselves, and our guide, Dr. Randy Smith from The History
Channel, told us the following facts about engagements and weddings during the
time of Jesus. To this day I can’t
repeat this story without being overcome with emotion.
In Jesus’ day when a
young man was ready for marriage his parents brought him to the village square,
where he proudly made an imprint in the mud with his sandal. The next day, the young girl whom the
families had decided should be the next to marry came to that same square and
shyly placed her footprint inside his.
And with that sacred gesture they became engaged.
There was much to get ready! The bridegroom would have to leave soon
to build an addition onto the home
he shared with his parents so that he and his bride could live there and raise
their children.
That night, at the ceremonial meal with both families, the
bridegroom took bread and, giving God thanks and praise, broke the bread, gave
it to his betrothed and said, “Take this and eat it. This is the bread of my covenant with you. Do not let your heart be troubled. In my father’s house are many
rooms. I am going now to prepare a
place for us. I will come back for
you, so that where I am you also may be.
If it were not so I would have told you.”
Ah. So that was marital language that Jesus
spoke to his disciples on the night before he died! No wonder the first “sign” in John’s Gospel is Jesus at a
wedding. It turns out he was the
Bridegroom all along.
Sharing God's Word at Home:
Why do you think the first
recorded miracle of Jesus’ was at a wedding?
Kathy McGovern ©2010
