A Homily for the Second Sunday after Epiphany

+ Quodcumque dixerit vobis facite. (Do whatever He tells you.) As this new year of Our Lord 2022 gathers pace and begins its course, we can do no better than to ponder these words of the Blessed Virgin Mary proclaimed anew to each of us by our mother the Church in the Gospel of this Holy Mass. Of these five words, the two smallest hold the key to their meaning and import.
 
The first of these words is “He”—Do whatever HE tells you. “He” is the Incarnate Son of God, the definitive revelation of God in history, the unique saviour of all mankind. His commands are God’s commands. They manifest He Who is the summation of Truth, Goodness and Beauty. They lead us to salvation.
 
Our Lord Jesus Christ established His Church faithfully to transmit His saving teaching to each generation until the end of time so that we too may be saved. This morning’s Epistle is a beautiful example of the Apostle Saint Paul doing exactly that—instructing the people of Rome in how to live a life that leads to salvation (in singularly beautiful detail, which itself bears much prayerful contemplation).
 
What is essential here is that what is handed on and taught is that which comes from Christ and His apostles, addressed to our particular circumstances and developed as necessary, certainly, but in complete fidelity and continuity to that which was revealed by Our Lord and taught by the apostles. The Church has no business in doing anything else, then as now, for as St Paul taught the Galatians: “even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed.” (Gal. 1:8; see 1 Tim. 6) No successor of the apostles, no matter how important or authoritarian, no cleric or catechist no matter how convincing, is exempt from this requirement of fidelity to the tradition as it develops in continuity throughout the ages.
 
Our Lord warned us to “beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.” (Mt 7:15) St Paul found it necessary to denounce “false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.” (2 Cor. 11:13) If we are to know what “He” tells us to do, we must be sure of the orthodoxy and indeed the orthopraxy of those who teach us. For now, as then, unfortunately not all those entrusted with the ministry of authority bind themselves “to obedience to God’s Word in the face of every attempt to adapt it or water it down and every form of opportunism.” (Benedict XVI, Homily, 7 May 2005)
 
Nevertheless, if we purify and nourish our hearts, minds and souls through frequent recourse to the sacraments and by full, conscious and actual participation in the riches of the Church’s liturgical tradition, and delve deeply into her articulation of the faith she celebrates, we shall encounter the splendour of the Truth and, living in that light, we can come to understand what He tells us to do in our particular circumstances today, individually and collectively.
 
The second of the two key words used by the Blessed Virgin Mary is: “Do”—DO whatever He tells you. For it is not enough to know what He tells me to do. My salvation is to be found in the doing of His will, not in procrastinating about it. St Augustine’s famous words “give me chastity and continence, but not yet” (Confessions 8.7.17) may give rise to a wry smile, but they reflect much of the human condition: we may well know what Almighty God requires of us, but we have little will to get on with the doing of it. Too often our wills hesitate to enact what our intellects know to be right and true because of our attachment to sin or our fear of what doing God’s will might involve and cost our comfortable lives. “Not yet, Lord,” we might be tempted to say along with the unconverted Augustine.
 
Yet these fears, these attachments serve only to blind us to what the doing of God’s Holy Will can bring about in us and through us. Our unhesitating and generous willingness to get on and do what He asks of us will result in us looking with astonishment—together with the servants and the steward at the wedding of Cana—upon the wonders, indeed the miracles, that our cooperation with God’s will permit.
 
“DO whatever HE tells you.” This, then, is our task in this year of Our Lord 2022. Faithfully so doing may not be without cost, suffering or difficulty: we live in times when the Church and the world are in great turmoil. But our salvation lies in so doing, and nowhere else. Daily perseverance in fidelity to this injunction is what is required.
 
Our fidelity and perseverance to His Will shall see us invited to partake of the “new wine” of the Kingdom of Heaven (cf. Mt 26:29) of which the wine of the wedding at Cana is but a prefiguration, poured out from the side of Christ upon the Cross, and poured out anew for us in this Holy Mass—a wine that shall bring joy to our hearts (cf. Ps. 103:15) now and for all eternity. +

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