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In God’s
merciful forgiveness, a new hope, a fresh start, a more
intimate relationship awaits His people (Isaiah 62:1-5).
In the water transformed into wine, as a sign of the new
order, the believers may now slake their deep thirst for
salvation in the life and teachings of Jesus (John
2:1-12).
The
restored Israel
The
prophetic scribes behind the third section of the book
of Isaiah, which is known as Trito-Isaiah (chapters
56-66) written about 5 B.C. after the Babylonian exile
and oppression, were laboring among the people going
through the turbulent period of reconstruction. Our text
is a portion of a song composed for the spiritual and
psychological edification of the people. They are
reminded of
Jerusalem’s
former glory and reassured of the restoration of that
glory.
The
prophetic song portrays the salvation of restored Israel
in striking images. God would not be silent or quiet,
until
Zion’s victorious vindication shines forth like the dawn or
like a burning torch.
Israel
then would be a glorious crown and a royal diadem held
by God, in obvious reference to the ancient Near East
practice of depicting the god of a city having a crown
patterned after the city’s walls.
Israel’s
new life as renewed in her relationship to Yahweh and
reestablished in the land He had given her would also be
expressed in the new names assigned her. The people who
had been scorned by other nations as “Forsaken” and the
land they had mocked as “Desolate” would be recognized
now as Hephziba (“My Delight”) and Beulah (“Espoused”).
The two terms are proper names for women in Hebrew (2
Kings 21:1) and could appropriately be turned into
messianic titles indicating the time of salvation that
has come for the people of God.
Yahweh’s
bride
Indeed,
the Lord would delight in Israel and make her land His
spouse. The divine Builder, the architect of Israel’s
salvation, would espouse Himself to her once more, thus
the walls of Jerusalem and all her towers would be
reconstructed. As a young man weds a virgin, who has
nobody else, and as a bridegroom delights in his bride,
so would God marry and rejoice in Israel.
The
nuptial imagery popularized by Hosea describes the
reconciliation of Israel with Yahweh. So the restoration
of Israel in the love of God as the gift of divine mercy
is the basis for the people’s new hope and overflowing
joy. In the background of the people’s sins and
violation of the covenant, the new life and the glorious
vindication being made available to them is amazingly no
less than the intimacy of a bride in the love and joy of
a groom. The wedding imagery had traditionally meant
Israel’s faith in God’s saving love (Isaiah 54:4-8).
The
wedding at Cana
The
miracle or sign performed by Jesus at the wedding in
Cana of Galilee revealed His glory and led to the faith
of His disciples in Him. The seven signs the fourth
gospel lines up successively reveal more and more who
Jesus was and what His mission in the world would be. To
look behind the wonder of the sign and grow in faith in
Jesus is particularly needed in this event which has
been subjected already to various tendentious
interpretations.
The
wedding at Cana is primarily concerned with the
manifestation of Jesus as the messiah who is the host of
the eschatological banquet of salvation. He is the giver
of overflowing joy symbolized by the abundant and choice
wine.
The six
stone jars were filled with water (about 120 gallons in
all) intended for the ritual washing prescribed by
Jewish law, for instance, before and after meal. The
extravagant amount of the good wine recalls the
prophetic promises of an abundance of wine as a sign of
the messianic time (Amos 9:13-14; Psalm 104:15; Hosea
14:8; Jeremiah 31:12). It also underlines how the wine
of Jesus’s teaching and wisdom surpasses anything that
had gone before. That is why Mary’s words, “They have no
wine,” became a poignant commentary on the barrenness of
Jewish rituals. The new order inaugurated by Jesus is
like fine wine compared to the insipid water of the old
order. Jesus in His person replaced as obsolete previous
religious customs and institutions.
Alálaong
bagá:
Early on in this year, it is refreshing that we are led
in the liturgy to meditate on the overflowing joy that
our Christian life is supposed to be characterized with.
For the undeniable signs are all around us that we shall
have more of the same “difficult times” for so many of
the Filipinos, more of the same farce for politics, more
of the same supremacy for personal and partisan
interests. We need a transformation, some character
change, in order to replace our insipid water of poverty
and corruption with the joy-giving wine of progress and
prosperity. A wedding is also for Filipinos an image
replete with rejoicing and delight. It is a possibility
and an option for us as a people only because the
Bridegroom has already come and joined us in our life
and continues to invite us into a nuptial intimacy of
conversion and faith. |
