Among the four Gospels, John’s is the most symbolic one, that is, the one where each story, even each sentence, hides a different meaning.   We have a good example of this in today’s episode: John sets the first public appearance of Jesus at a wedding, an event which has always been understood as the ideal image of happiness and joy.  The First Reading compares the covenant of God with Israel to a wedding and the Second Reading stresses different ways and functions in the Church through which this mutual love is expressed.

In the Gospel’s story, the focus is not about the bride and groom, as is customary, but about the wine. And not about the quantity in agreement with the number of guests but an overwhelming one: two hundred gallons of wine.  An unbelievable amount which directs our attention to the deeper meaning of the story.   This overabundance is typical of our Lord’s approach towards humanity.  His coming in the flesh has one goal: to show our humanity, so often tempted by pessimism and despair, that we have been created to live in happiness, joy and peace.

But this happiness will not be given to us as a lottery ticket but as something which we have to build and create “in toil and sweat” (Gen 3:17).  In other words, our Lord does not give us the crop but the seed.  At the beginning, says the Bible, on the seventh day, when He had finished His work, God went to His rest.  And why would He stop working?  After all, there was still plenty to do.  The Jewish tradition has a wonderful answer to this question:  God withdrew, it says, to leave room for humanity so that it could take full responsibility for the maintenance and development of the world.  The world has been entrusted to us.  It is our responsibility to take charge of it.  Let us do it.  Amen.

Today’s liturgical readings are full of words which recall to our minds, not so much what we have to believe and do, but rather how we have to behave when we are and want to be with God. They address our hearts more than our minds.  They talk about tenderness, mercy, goodness, thirst quenching, lambs tenderly carried in the shepherd’s arms and doves, symbolizing life and peace.

We, people of my generation, were not taught to see God and speak to Him in those kinds of words.  Our religious education focused more on efforts to make, sacrifices to offer, bad habits to uproot, than on love to develop.  We heard more about hell to avoid than about heaven to desire.   Pain and suffering were for now.   Rest, peace and love were for after.   The more that you were unhappy down here on earth, the happier you would be up there after.

Today’s Readings though, go the opposite way.  They do not deny the importance of effort, but they go the positive way.  First, they remind us that if God chose to be one of us, that is to be born, to grow, to be baptized like all of us, then it must be because the human condition has something good about it.  And second, they invite me  to make of my daily life a moment of happiness for me and for all those who live with and around me.

At Christmas and on New Year’s Day, the liturgy was centered on Jesus and His mother.  Today it is centered on the three wise men.  All throughout history, believers and nonbelievers have tried to find the nature of that guiding star and the identity of those three wise men coming from the East.  Hence an overabundant crop of studies in every field of research: astronomy, comparative religions, history, esotericism.  This quest for truth is legitimate but takes us away from the meaning intended by the author.  This story intends to convey a message not a scientific account.  In former times, stars were gods and their evolution in the sky was giving a message from God: through this child God is speaking to us.   This might be the first message of this story.  The second one lies in the diversity of the people who came to pay homage to this child: angels, shepherds, astrologists, scholars etc.  This diversity reveals that our Lord’s message is intended for every human being on earth, whatever their social level:  people from the East and from the West, people of every race and colour, scholars and ordinary people, rich and poor, people in heaven and people on earth. Christianity is not a religion for a particular category of people, like it used to be with pagan religions: it is for all of humanity.   Finally, the third message of this story could be the fact that God’s message is proclaimed to us through a child, who in the culture of those former times, was powerless and considered unimportant.  It is an invitation for us to propose not to impose our faith as we did too much and too often in the past.  The truth can never be imposed, only proposed.  And nobody should be obliged to believe, only invited to.  And proposed not only through words but through daily behaviour. For we know that always and everywhere, what we do speaks always louder than what we say.   Amen.  

A week ago, the liturgy was centered on Jesus.  Today, it is centered on Mary. A week ago, the emphasis was on the Child.   Today, it is on the Mother, and Catholic devotion since has developed a countless variety of prayers, liturgies and rites in honour of Mary.  Surprisingly though, the New Testament, which is the primary source of our faith, has very little to say about Mary.  Why is so little a place given to Mary in the Gospel? Wasn’t she chosen by God Himself to be the mother of His Son?  The answer to this question may be found in the attitude that Mary keeps all through the Gospel: her silence.  At the foot of the Cross, she says nothing.  On finding her Son in the Temple, she does not yell but rather “ponders these things in her mind”.  

This silence might be the key to Mary’s presence in the Gospel. To perceive God’s intervention in our lives, we have to keep silent. For God never shouts, He speaks.  And when He does, He speaks to the heart.  And His voice is like the light breeze, says the prophet.  To hear that voice then, one has to shut up and pay attention.  This has become quite difficult in our lives filled with noise. We even hate silence: when we are alone or when the conversation suddenly stops, we put on the TV or start talking just to avoid the silence.  In such a world, it is difficult to hear a whispered confidence; it is difficult to see a tear drop; it is difficult to hear the silent call of close ones asking for a listening ear.  It is said in the Gospel that at night, Jesus would go to the mountain to pray.   Each one of us has to find our own mountain where we can make silence and, if we wish, to pray. For whatever the circumstances may be or whatever the reasons, silence is like water, it is always beneficial.  Amen.  

In every country and in all cultures, the teen age years have always been and still are a major moment of tensions in life.  For it is the time when kids become aloof, not only with their parents but with the whole system  of values and rules that they were brought up in. Such is the situation we find in today’s Gospel.  Jesus’ family is going on their yearly pilgrimage to Jerusalem.  But Jesus, who is only twelve years old, disappears during the three days.  And when His mother dares to ask Him where He was, He answers sharply:  “Why were  you searching for me?” and immediately after follows with “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”  A remark the meaning of which totally escapes His parents.  This misunderstanding does not surprise us anymore nowadays;  a teenager runs away without notice, his parents are worried to death, they tell him this but he rebels and ends up giving them an answer that makes no sense to them. This story could cause us to indulge into psychological considerations about the youth of our modern age.  But the Gospels are not that kind of book.  They are a book where God talks to us through daily life events.  Is there something in it then to grab for our daily behaviour? My first answer to such a question would be very matter of fact.  Most of the time, we do not know about other people’s reactions to situations and this includes our own children.  The year before they were happy to attend the family gatherings at Christmas, but the year after, all you get is a bored yawn from them if you happen to even mention it.  At the end of today’s Gospel, it is said that “Mary, Jesus’ mother, treasured all these things in her heart” and that Jesus, that child who not so long before had disappeared without notice for three days “increased in wisdom and in years”.  This is to me an invitation to see things in a positive way.  That our young people would run away from our traditional family gatherings does not necessarily  mean that they are running away from us.  That so many people would leave the traditional religious practice does not necessarily mean that they are away from God.  But there is still more to this Gospel.  There is this idea that God is always present to each one of us and never shuts the door when we knock.  Beyond the turmoil and failures of our modern world, Our Lord keeps on proposing His help without ever imposing it.  He keeps on longing for our love without condemning us if we refuse.  A love, we need to understand,  to do like Mary, that is to make silence in our heart.  Amen.

Each year we celebrate Christmas and each one of us has our own reasons for doing it.  Holidays, traditions, for the kids, to meet with family.   All these reasons are good reasons.   The problem though, is that these reasons may be applied to any celebration.  What is it then that pushes us to give so much importance to this religious celebration? In other words, why would we need religion?  In our minds, religion is a set of regulations to go by, to express our membership in an institution called the Church”: to go to church on Sunday, to receive communion and the sacraments, to have one’s child baptized and so  on.   But Christian faith, as intended by our Lord, is much more than that.  It is above all a vital relationship with someone we call God.  It demands that one personally and deeply invest in this.   Christmas is the same.  At Christmas, we celebrate God’s birth into our world.  To say that is to say that God has chosen to fully live the whole human condition: lies, rejection, loneliness and death.  But, also friendship, respect, service and love.  Moreover, on becoming a man, God makes us understand that the only way to happiness is transparency, not make believe, commitment not distance, trust not mistrust.  God’s birth as a child also means that faith, like life, is built slowly.  You know how it is with kids: you repeat, reproach and correct, wondering if they will ever understand.  And then suddenly, through a remark, a word or a question, your child appears differently to you.  You had   not seen how awakened he or she has become.  You had not expected such maturity and seriousness.  It is the same with God.  Through a great stress or deep joy, through a brutal blow or some unexpected good news, something starts burning inside of you.  You don’t know clearly what is happening to you.  But you know that someone is calling and waiting for an answer.  This slowness of pace, this slow growth may be seen as the main message from God.   Like us, He had to grow through events and situations, to learn with and from those surrounding Him.  The fact that He did it, manifests that this is the way to happiness, the only way, to be honest.  All the other ways are wishful thinking and smoke. Regulations, in the matter of religion, are set for that one purpose: to help us to enter into a living relationship with God.  Otherwise, they make no sense.  This is my Christmas wish for all of us:  that we learn to live giving and receiving from one another.  Amen

Today’s readings focus on the meaning of Christ’s coming rather than on the details of His birth which will be developed at length at Christmas.  The first reading foretells the coming of an era of peace and the second one sets the main conditions for this coming: a religion of the heart.  As examples of what a religion of the heart means, the Gospel presents to us two women, two cousins, Elizabeth and Mary, who happen to be both pregnant at the same time.  The Gospel will present them to us as models of hope, belief and love.   Models of hope, because like all mothers of the world, they hope that their sons will be normal, heathy and the pride of their parents.  Models of belief also because in the Angel’s visit to Mary and in the unexpected pregnancy of Elizabeth, they acknowledge God’s presence.  And models of love for even if she is pregnant herself, Mary will cross the mountains of Judea to tend to her cousin’s pregnancy.

Like Mary and Elizabeth, we too, Christians, have become people of hope, belief and love.  Of hope because, far from being discouraged on account of the huge problems our societies have to face, we believe that it is possible to do better; of belief for whatever be the fight we have to do, we know that we are never alone; models of love because, as Christians, our privilege weapons are respect and fairness.

Our world is neither better nor worse than the one we come from and the one we enter into.  The only difference between the then and now is the fact that today’s world is the one which God has given to us to live in; and that God is as present now in our empty Churches as He was in the filled to the brim ones of the past.  Let us not be afraid then to face our world. God is with us.  Amen

In Today’s Gospel, John the Baptist is presented as the forerunner of the Messiah to whom people go for answers.   For they see him as the voice of God and expect him to tell them what they have to do to be saved.  

To their question, John gives a triple answer:  Share what you have, do not ask for more that you deserve and abstain from violence.  A triple advice which has to do with daily life and shows that faith is first of all a question of self commitment.  In our societies, we have thousands of plans, reports and suggestions written in hundreds of “white books” and covering fields of human activity.  But these plans and suggestions will be of no avail if they are not based on personal honesty, eagerness to share and a general attitude of respect towards citizens.   Values which ultimately are based on our Christian faith.

So let us pledge ourselves to act the way we ask everyone else to act:  Let us strive to be honest, sharing, respectful, joyful, compassionate, calm, mild, benevolent and thoughtful.  And let us ask God to make us able to discern what really matters from what does not.  Doomsayers are wrong: humanity has a future.  Let us ask God to become people of trust.  Amen. 

“And all flesh shall see the salvation of God”.  This is the sentence which attracted my attention in Today’s Gospel.  All flesh means everybody in the world.  And the word “salvation” in Jesus’ mouth means peace between human beings which, in turn, implies justice and friendship.  In the Gospel, God promises that His contribution to humanity will be to promote justice and friendship.  In other words, no privilege, no war, no violence, no robbery, but rather honesty, friendship, understanding, respect and so on. Put this way, this ideal appears as an impossible dream.  Some bad habits seem impossible to eradicate and pessimism seems to be the only realistic attitude to develop.  Once more though, this is not Jesus’ approach to these situations.   He welcomes the Prodigal Son.  He gives a second chance to the adulterous woman and to the fruitless fig tree.  And all through human history, He sends people to remind us of this.  Like John the Baptist and the saints.  The same with us.  We believe in God when we see a husband or a wife spending their time, day and night, at their sick partner’s bedside; when we witness people who seek justice and not vengeance; who welcome strangers in their community; who help the destitute; who share in prayer groups, work for their fellow citizens’ welfare; fight against injustice; go to the Third World to help for free; help young people with their homework; and so on.  In faith, hand shaking is better than slapping and walking with someone is better than telling they how to walk.  Jesus says “whoever welcomes a child in my name, welcomes me”.  A child is small and a glass of water is little but when one helps this way, it is God Himself who helps through him.   Amen.  

In the province of Quebec, the last sixty years have been a period of affluence that our ancestors and even our parents had never known.  We have never lived so long and so healthy.  We have never had so much information and so many possibilities of promotion as we have now.  And yet, our daily conversations are haunted with an overall pessimism which poisons our lives.  As if we have lost hope in the future.  As if the end of the world would be coming soon.  As if we were going to be the victims of the frightening calamities that our Lord speaks of in Today’s Gospel.  Is there something for us in these outdated predictions?  Let us acknowledge first that calamities were never absent from history, every century has had its own, including ours.  We just have to think about the endless wars we have been going through and the pandemic.  But as frequent and awful as they may be, those calamities are not the focal point of Jesus’ speech.  The focal point of His speech is that God watches over us and that, in the end, He will take us with Him.  Consequently, as the Advent Liturgy rightly points out, we must not indulge in endless laments about the good old days forever gone, or about the emptiness of worldly things or to dream of paradise forever lost.  The upcoming four weeks will remind us that we don’t have to fear but to give a positive glance to all the wonderful efforts which are made for peace around us and roll up our sleeves to do our share.  Fashions, opinions, theories, plans, projects even health pass away.  But love, friendship, respect, attention, service never do, for they are forever.   Amen.