We are in the third year of the cycle of Sunday Mass readings, Year C, the Year of Luke. Yet just when we have arrived in Ordinary Time, just when we expect to get a whole series of readings from the Gospel of Luke – following on from Luke’s version of the Baptism which we heard last week – today’s Gospel comes from Saint John. There must be a pretty good reason for breaking the sequence – and, of course, there is.

The Gospel for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time in Year C (John 2: 1- 11) is the story of the first miracle of Jesus, the changing of water into wine during a wedding feast at Cana in Galilee. It takes its place here as an extension of the previous Sundays, because this miracle is considered another “Epiphany”, another way in which the divinity of Jesus is revealed. In fact in the early centuries of the Church the feast of the Epiphany included in one day all three of the mysteries which we have remembered over the course of three weeks: the visit of the magi, the baptism in the Jordan, and the first miracle. An Epiphany sermon of Saint Peter Chrysologus, the fifth century Bishop of Ravenna in Italy, mentions all three of them:

The great events we celebrate today disclose and reveal in different ways the fact that God himself took a human body.

Today the Magi find, crying in a manger, the one they have followed as he shone in the sky. Today the Magi gaze in deep wonder at what they see: heaven on earth, earth in heaven, man in God, God in man, one whom the whole universe cannot contain now enclosed in a tiny body. As they look, they believe and do not question, as their symbolic gifts bear witness: incense for God, gold for a king, myrrh for one who is to die.

Today Christ enters the Jordan to wash away the sin of the world. John himself testifies that this is why he has come: Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world. Today the Holy Spirit hovers over the waters in the likeness of a dove. A dove announced to Noah that the flood had disappeared from the earth; so now a dove is to reveal that the world’s shipwreck is at an end for ever.

Today Christ works the first of his signs from heaven by turning water into wine. But water has still to be changed into the sacrament of his blood, so that Christ may offer spiritual drink from the chalice of his body.

In other words, Christ’s divinity is made manifest in all three of these mysteries (and it is natural that Pope John Paul II should have included the baptism and the first miracle among the Mysteries of Light which he added to the rosary). However, as Saint Peter Chrysologus noted, the revelation is not complete. The water became wine, but we witness the even greater miracle of wine becoming Christ’s blood. That mystery, and many more, we will come to know again if we faithfully attend to the unfolding of the liturgical year. With the mystery of God we can always go deeper.