2ND Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C, 2025

Be Ordinary: The Meaning of “Ordinary Time” of the Church 
Isaiah 62:1-5; 1 Corinthians 12:4-11; John 2:1-11
The partying and festivities are over, it’s time to start working again, no wonder it is called the “Ordinary Time”: it will take a while before (Extra-Ordinary Time or Festive Time) Easter and Christmas come around again and, then, we can party and celebrate. Even at that, my favorite part of partying and celebration is not the clean-up after the party, like the shoveling of snow, after a white-Christmas, not to talk of dealing with slush, after winter days. I would rather live in condominium than own a private house, where I need to shovel snow; I will rather attend another person’s party than invite people to mine, and deal with cleaning up afterwards – how lazy I am, to abandon the scenery of a private house, the courtyard and space for barbecues in summer and playing ground for children. What is the solution, should we stop partying? By no means, life will be too boring!
There is a solution – I need to grow up! The traditional African solution to a lazy man’s life is to give him a wife – responsibility brings about industriousness, especially the arrival of a wife and children. A married man gets a new name – husband; a married woman’s status changes – she becomes a wife; husband and wife go on to increase their responsibilities and status – they become Dad and Mom. If you add uncles, in-laws, etc, the list of responsibilities becomes really long. Only grown-ups – adults – delight in work and take pride in new adventures called marriage, parenthood, etc., they accept the normality or ordinariness of life!
In this season called “Ordinary Time,” the Catholic Church welcomes you to adulthood and the responsibilities that go with it. Today is the Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, the first Sunday was last Sunday, the Baptism of the Lord. Analogously, welcome to the meaning of the Baptism of the Lord, as well as your baptism – a point from which you become an adult before the world and before God, the moment when God considers you worthy of being entrusted with responsibility. At his baptism, Jesus got a new name: my Son, the beloved! After his baptism, Jesus started doing God’s will, God’s work of spreading the good news of salvation. Now, our first reading begins to add up – “you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give” (Isaiah 62:2): new name equals new job – Christian job! But where will the Lord see me and change my name to a new name? Who told him that I need a new name, anyway? What a rude awakening after the festivities of Christmas, now I will be given a job; a new name indeed!
The moment we step forward or our parents make the conscious choice of presenting us for baptism, we encounter the Lord who gives us a new name and identity. We do not need to ask him to give us a new name, the very act of baptism gives us a new name – we are anointed with the oil of Chrism to become Christ-like. And to be Christ-like is to begin to live like Christ – do the will of God, the job of godly life. Our new name is actually a job – we become employees of God through baptism, and every employee has working hours assigned to him/her. In Catholic parlance, the “Ordinary Time,” begun by the Baptism of the Lord, last Sunday, is every Christian’s working hour, not to say office hour.
Our second reading makes the necessity for each one of us to be at work and duty conscious, when it says: “There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit; there are different forms of service but the same Lord; there are different workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone. To each individual, the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit” (1 Cor 12:4-6). This simply shows that no human being, the way God sees it, can ever be jobless, since each person has a manifestation of the Spirit of God in him/her each person has a job, a God-given gift.
It is true that today’s gospel presents Jesus to us as a superstar – he turns water into wine. But a simple question will help us to see other superstars at the wedding feast of Cana – the drinkers of the wine! Why change water into wine if there are no drinkers of wine? Or, the simple request of Mary to Jesus – “they have no wine!” In Jesus, Mary and the wedding guests, we see three kinds of gifts of God. 1) In Jesus, we see the power of God to work miracles: with God everything is possible – changing water into wine; 2) in Mary, we see the power of prayer: there are many people whose gift is the ability to pray, we call such people intercessors – they pray for others, not only for themselves – Mary’s prayer/request leads to the changing of water into wine; and, 3) we have the remainder of the guests at the wedding feast: those who prove themselves as friends and respond, without finding excuses, by attending a friend’s function and festivities, those who make sure that wine and food are consumed, not wasted – the gift of appetite!
“Ordinary Time,” is the invitation to you and me to live out our baptismal promises in ordinary ways: to be the best father, mother, teacher, lawyer, wife, husband, etc. My ability to cook well, sing well, dance well, laugh heartily, all come from God, and benefit my brothers and sisters; my   life of pray is a gift from which my brothers and sisters can benefit, like Mary helping a couple to avoid embarrassment on their wedding day; that when I drink responsibly, I am like Jesus who attends parties and eats and drinks, and he’s sometimes called glutton and friend of sinners; when my holiness of life does not prevent me from mingling with known sinners, it is a gift of God because sinners too are children of God, and they too need friends; when I have a party, I invite others, and not just limit the list of guests to my family members.
The fact that Jesus spends his life, after baptism, in doing good to all, in ordinary ways – eating and drinking with sinners, keeping the Sabbath and preaching the good news of the kingdom, defending the woman caught in adultery from being stoned to death, and healing the sick and multiplying loaves to feed the hungry, weeping for a dead friend, Lazarus, while being friends with Mary, Martha and Zacchaeus, he invites me to the same simple life; Jesus neither fired/sacked Peter for denying him, nor condemned humanity for hanging him on the cross. It is now high time I found one of these attributes of Jesus to imitate during this Ordinary Time of the Church. Ordinary Time is clean up time after the party, it’s snow-shoveling time for adults, it’s work time for every Christian: viva Ordinary Time, for ordinary works, not miracles!
 Assignment for the Week
What attribute of Jesus in the gospels do you want to practice all week long, especially in remembrance of your baptismal vows? Or, could you find the history of your patron saint and read it this week?

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