St John the Evangelist Parish

January 19, 2025

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

A friend invited me to an invitation-only wine-tasting event. There were over two hundred varieties of wine. Having no idea how to approach such a massive selection, I wandered aimlessly among the tables, sipping this and that. At the end of the evening, my friend asked if I had tried some of the exceptionally expensive wines. I hadn’t. “The really good stuff disappears first,” he said. “My man, you missed out on some amazing vino.” I was so disappointed. I wasted my chance for amazing once-in-a-lifetime wine. The wine I tasted was, well, blah.

Don’t we often feel a similar disappointment in life? I missed this or that opportunity. If only I had known. Optimism sputters and fades. The glory days are gone. The chances, it seems, for the really great things in life come and go so quickly. Then, they are gone forever. The good stuff goes first. Then life is just blah.

Not so with the Lord Jesus. In Jesus’ miracle at the wedding at Cana, the steward of the feast says, “Everyone serves good wine first, and then…an inferior one” (John 2:10). That’s the natural downward progression of life. The good stuff disappears quickly. But he says of the groom (who symbolizes Jesus), “But you have kept the good wine until now.” This is the ever-improving trajectory of the realm of God’s grace. With Jesus, the “good wine” of divine love, hope, and peace gets better as our faith journey progresses. Where are your greatest disappointments? Don’t give in to the lie that the really good stuff is gone. Tell Jesus you’ve run out. Then, learn how to taste that amazingly good wine because he saves the best until now.