FILLING THE WATERPOTS

 A SERMON FOR THE 2ND SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY

I mentioned last week that we should know when it’s important to “heal on the Sabbath.”  What I meant by that was that there are times when we may break the law without incurring any moral censure, in other words, without offending God.  It’s a question of the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law, and last week we learned, I hope, under what circumstances we may invoke this principle. 

When a civil law is being enforced even with great vigor by an unlawful authority, we may disregard it.  Last week, we learned that even if the authority is lawful, there are times when we may disobey it in order to obey a higher law.  Our Blessed Lord taught us this lesson by his example, when, as a young boy, he remained behind in the temple of Jerusalem “to be about his Father’s business.”  God’s business always comes first, and the 12-year-old Jesus held it in higher esteem even than his respect for our Blessed Lady and St. Joseph.

But after that, having made his point, he went with them to Nazareth “and was subject unto them.”  For how long?  Was it just until he became a teenager, or reached the age of 18?  Did he stop obeying his Blessed Mother once he was baptized in the River Jordan by St. John the Baptist?  Today, we’re given the answer to this question when our Lord accompanied his Mother to a wedding feast in Cana, a town less than four miles from where they lived in Nazareth.  Presumably, a friend of the family was getting married, and our Lord and his Mother had been invited to celebrate their marriage.  The Holy Family was not above enjoying a day of lawful festivity.

But when the poor newly-weds ran out of wine, our Lady was quick to save their wedding feast from disaster.  She merely mentioned to her Son that “they have no wine,” and he, foregoing his own divine plan, submitted to her wishes and performed his first miracle, creating wine out of ordinary drinking water.  It’s abundantly clear from this that the adult Jesus still honored his Mother and wished to fulfill her every request, even when it did not coincide with his own divine will.

Is it any different today?  No it is not.  Before we start whining that our Blessed Lord hasn’t answered all our prayers, let’s remember he still, even now, listens to his Mother’s pleas for us, and has been putting off his divine plan for many years now because of her.  At La Salette and Fatima, our blessed Lady has been warning us what would happen if we do not amend our ways.  But despite these admonitions, the world has become increasingly godless.  No need to give you the litany of awful things, or to remind you we’re living in the midst of a world that’s going completely mad.  But I will remind you that we were warned, and we heeded not those warnings.  Russia was never consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and sure enough, that once-communist nation has now spread her errors, her Marxist philosophy, wherever any upstart group of liberal-minded revolutionaries that has been ready to listen, not just in politics, but in the colleges and universities, in the big technology companies, even in the news and entertainment industries.  We no longer have to force ourselves to imagine Marxists overtaking the United States.  It’s no longer in the realm of imagination, we’re seeing it actually happen.  Many people are surprised that God hasn’t intervened already and wiped us all out.  Indeed, it’s quite likely he may already have done so, if it had not been for the Blessed Virgin Mary, pleading with him to withhold his righteous anger.

Can our Blessed Lady continue to intervene with God?  Can she persuade him to fix the mess we’re in?  At the wedding feast of Cana, when our Lady saw that they had no wine and she resolved to ask her Son to help out the embarrassed newly-weds, she asked but one thing of the stewards: “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.”  If he asks you to fill the waterpots with water, then do it.  If he tells you to then pour out this water into wine glasses and offer it to the honored guests as wine, then don’t question him, just obey.

We must do the same thing.  In these latter days, there have been many apparitions of the Mother of God.  Her message each time has been the same: Pray the Rosary, pray the Rosary, pray the Rosary.  She asks just this one thing.  It sounds like such a simple little task—fill the waterpots with water, pray the Rosary—so easy, and yet have we really taken it seriously?  Pray the Rosary so that you may avoid the terrible chastisement that my Son will otherwise inflict on this sinful world.  It’s not much to ask of us, especially as the consequences of not following her wishes are so severe and terrible.  But perhaps it is such a simple thing to ask, that we doubt its power.  After all, how are a few Hail Marys going to avert the destruction of the world?  They’re surely nothing but a drop in the bucket.  Just another drop of water being poured into the waterpots.  And yet, when our Rosary is complete, when all is said and done, what is poured forth from those waterpots of grace is so sublime, so beneficial, so miraculous, that none of us can ever comprehend the blessings we are given, never mind the evils we avoid.  We just have to take that extra leap of faith, and believe in our Rosaries, believe that God can miraculously change these little beads of water into wine.

We should have such faith!  Our Lord cannot refuse his Mother anything she asks of him.  He might be able to tell us “No!” but not his Mother.  And when we call upon her to intercede for us, he will not only grant her prayers, he will actually be delighted by the filial piety we show towards his Mother, our Mother.  Every time we utter those two simple words, “Hail, Mary!” our Lord is so happy that we are giving honor to his Mother that he pours a deluge of blessings upon us from those infinite waterpots of grace.  All we have to do is follow his Mother’s wishes and fill up those waterpots with our Hail Marys.  Have faith, and out of the evils that weigh so heavily upon us, God will draw such great good such as we cannot begin to imagine.