Today’s readings: Isaiah 62, 1-5; 1 Corinthians 12, 4-11; John 2, 1-11.

We very often query and make manifest our concern on what may be going wrong with our world today. It is not a question of being negative or pessimistic. But so many things at a time seem to be going haywire and make us very sceptical about almost everything, putting to question even our very willingness to overcome despair.

Resilience is probably the most needed virtue at this point in time. As believers we cannot afford to let ourselves be carried away or even contaminated with the sense of being lost, fearful, feeling hopelessness, indifference or cynicism.

This is practically what the prophet Isaiah in the first reading is saying: “About Zion I will not be silent, about Jerusalem I will not grow weary, until her integrity shines out”.

Isaiah is indicating that what remains of utmost importance for those who believe, is not to become weary, tired of hoping and loving, of trusting and struggling, of believing to the very end that love is stronger than death.

Isaiah pledged not to remain silent until integrity again surfaces and triumphs over corruption, until the bright side of history is no longer in the shadow of darkness.

This determination ‘not to remain silent’ should articulate in concrete the will of the Church and of believers in today’s social, political and cultural context to spell out what in human nature is good and beautiful in spite of what is commonly highlighted.

For the love of Zion, for the love of Jerusalem, the prophet Isaiah is audacious in hope and that gives him an inner force that keeps him from shutting his mouth.

All this is enacted in St John’s gospel today with the incident at the Cana wedding.

John situates this incident at the start of his gospel precisely to present Jesus from the outset as the remedy of whatever is in disarray in the whole set-up of the way we live. The wedding was ruined because wine ran out.

This in the gospel stands for the situations we go through daily in life whenever we run out of that inner force that keeps us going.

Jesus ensures that the feast continues. He substitutes fear with joy, he changes water into wine, and sustains us not to let the wine turn again into water.

The wine stands for that inner power that from the faith perspective comes from God who is capable of changing reality or of ensuring in us the right perspective in life.

There is also a major question we should be asking ourselves today while listening to God’s word: has the wine of prophecy on our tables turned into water?

If there is no wine at our tables, on our altars where we celebrate our faith, then as believers we have simply become part of the problem and in no way can we proclaim or provide the remedy for an ailing world.

If in the present-day context, the Church itself, and the wisdom traditions of all religions, run out of wine, that would be the worst of tragedies.

This is the challenge ahead of us all – to put wine again on the world table, to rediscover, in our case, the joy of the gospel, to win back the trust needed and overcome the darkness.

There are ruts in which we can easily be entrapped.

We need to be resilient in the face of all this. Isaiah was adamant not to let go. Jesus, on the indication of Mary, proved part of the solution.

This is what we are all called to do now. There are easy options, like giving in, becoming cynical and sitting on the fence.

But what is easiest is many a time not the best. We are called to recover the inner power of God’s love that can heal the world and give back to people the audacity of hope.