WHO MADE ME?

 A REFLECTION FOR THE 2ND SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY

"Who made me?" It’s the first question in the catechism, the first thing we learn as a child about our holy religion.  The fact that without God, I wouldn’t even exist.  We go on to learn that while he created most things out of nothing, he made man out of the slime of the earth.  “Remember man, that thou art dust, and into dust thou shalt return.” We’ll be hearing that soon as the priest places ash on our foreheads to remind us of our true worth, at least in natural terms.  But of course, God also made man in his own image and likeness, a likeness that is chiefly in our soul.  And in supernatural terms, that tells us what we are worth in the eyes of God, who ultimate died for our salvation, so much does he love us.

 

Man is man.  He cannot become a chimpanzee, try as he will to act like one.  And a man cannot become a woman, no matter how much lipstick and makeup he puts on the outside, or what kind of plastic surgery and hormone implants he goes through on the inside.  We are what we are—"God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” (Genesis 1:27)

 

The point is, nature follows the rules that God has appointed.  One of those rules is that whatever a thing is, it stays what it is.  It either already is, or it is already potentially what it will become.  Thus an acorn, though it is is not already an oak tree, has the potential to become an oak tree if the normal rules of nature take their course.  Similarly, a fetus, although not yet a man or woman, has the potential to become one, if we allow nature to do its work.  It cannot become a rock, or a tree—it has the potential only to become one thing, just as a boy will grow up to be a man, or a girl to be a woman.

 

Water has its own rules.  It has the potential to become ice if it gets cold enough, or steam if we heat it up to the right temperature.  Water, ice and steam, though, all have the same chemical components, and are essentially the same thing.  Water cannot become something completely different.  It cannot become a rock or a tree.  Water cannot become wine.  It is physically impossible.

 

And yet it happened.  Today’s Gospel reveals how the Messiah, at the behest of his Mother, turned the physical matter of water into something essentially different—into wine.  This did not follow the rules of nature that God created.  It broke every scientific rule in the book.  But is that so amazing when we consider that it was God who created not just wine and water, but the rules of nature that govern them?  It was God who made those scientific rules, and so it is God alone who can override them.  When he does so, it is called a miracle.  Christ’s first miracle at Cana in Galilee showed to the world that he was God.