Wine runs out, wildfires run amok: Living in hope

Homily for the Second Sunday of Ordinary Time 2025

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Over the last couple of weeks, amid horrific images of destruction from the LA wildfires, you may have seen, on social media, some of the inevitable accompanying disinformation, fake images, even fake video. Perhaps you saw the iconic Hollywood sign supposedly engulfed in flames. Or fake images shared by Catholics and other Christians depicting smoking ruins of entire neighborhoods—with a single surviving building, a house or perhaps a church, along with supposedly inspirational text celebrating God’s special care for the devout believer or committed pastor whose home God had allegedly spared.

In one version of this story, the fire supposedly swept through an Altadena neighborhood on the day after Epiphany, and of course the house that was spared belonged to a devout Catholic who had just the day before done the traditional Epiphany house blessing with blessed chalk—the sickeningly explicit message being “You see how God honors the prayers of good Catholics, especially when they do all the right things. Probably none of those other people who lost their homes did the Epiphany house blessing!” If they had, by implication, they would have been covered too—so goes the claim.

Why am I talking about Epiphany two weeks later, in Ordinary Time? Well, for one thing, today’s Gospel—the wedding at Cana—is the third in a series of Sunday Gospels tied to the feast of Epiphany. Last Sunday, we had the Baptism of the Lord; and the Sunday before, which was actually Epiphany, we had the Magi, the wise men, adoring the Christ child. But Epiphany is actually a threefold celebration embracing all three of these events in Christ’s life: the adoration of the Magi, the baptism of the Lord, and the wedding at Cana. In these three events the Church sees Christ’s glory progressively revealed or manifested. First, to the Magi, Christ is revealed by the silent movements of the heavens; second, to the followers of John the Baptist, he’s acclaimed by the voice of the Father in heaven; and finally at Cana, to his own disciples, Christ manifests himself through the first of his mighty signs, turning water into wine.

Even if it seems he does so a little reluctantly at first, initially resisting his mother’s intercession! This is a mysterious dimension to the story for a number of reasons, one of which is that it’s not clear exactly what Mary may have expected Jesus to do about this crisis, the wine running short at a weeklong wedding party! So far as we know, Jesus had performed no prior miracles, and we have no evidence of any advance knowledge on Mary’s part that miracles were imminent. Her Son was a carpenter, not a wine merchant! How exactly did she think he might address the problem?

It goes without saying that Mary had faith in her Son. Total, complete faith. And faith is complete only when it’s united to hope and love, or charity: faith, hope, and love, the three theological virtues. So Mary turns to Jesus in faith and love, and perhaps most of all in hope.

What is hope? Christian hope, the virtue of hope? How is it different from mere optimism or positive thinking? There’s no better time to ask that question than 2025, the Jubilee Year of Hope, so declared by Pope Francis. Hope is so closely related to faith that Pope Benedict XVI, in his encyclical on hope, Spe Salvi, says faith and hope can be synonymous. One distinction we can make is that where faith includes what is, hope concerns what will be—both in this life and in the life to come. Mary has faith in Jesus (that is what is), and this gives her hope regarding whatever will be.

“Whatever will be” means we may not know exactly how things will turn out. Sometimes the wine runs out, or the unemployment benefits run out, or wildfires run out of control, or loved ones run out of control. So many things go so very wrong, in our lives, our nation, our world … and the outcomes we pray for so often don’t come to pass. And that doesn’t mean we didn’t pray right or do the right religious things! (I’m all in favor of Epiphany house blessings—we did it at our house two weeks ago! But God forbid something happens to my neighbor’s house and I’m like “Ah, if he’d had his house blessed, like I did, things would be different!” That’s not how it works!)

Mary probably didn’t know what Jesus would or would not do. Look at what she says to the servants: not “He’ll tell you what to do,” but simply “Do whatever he tells you.” She accepts that the choice is his alone. She trusts her Son, come what may. Come what may. That’s hope.

“Hope does not disappoint,” St. Paul wrote in Romans 5. “Optimism disappoints,” adds Pope Francis,

but hope does not! We have such need, in these times which appear dark, in which we sometimes feel disoriented at the evil and violence which surrounds us, at the distress of so many of our brothers and sisters.

Yet however disoriented or discouraged we may feel, Pope Francis continues,

Each one of us can say: “I hope, I have hope, because God walks with me”. He walks and he holds my hand. God does not leave us to ourselves. The Lord Jesus has conquered evil and has opened the path of life for us.

I’ll leave you with converging words from the spiritual writer and priest Henri Nouwen:

Optimism is the expectation that things: the weather, human relationships, the economy, the political situation, and so on—will get better. Hope is the trust that God will fulfill God’s promises to us in a way that leads us to true freedom. The optimist speaks about concrete changes in the future. The person of hope lives in the moment with the knowledge and trust that all of life is in good hands. All the great spiritual leaders in history were people of hope. Abraham, Moses, Ruth, Mary, Jesus, Rumi, Gandhi and Dorothy Day all lived with a promise in their hearts that guided them toward the future without the need to know exactly what it would look like.

May that promise in our hearts guide us into the future, come what may, especially in this Jubilee Year of Hope.