Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

In the Gospel today we are able to perceive one of the consequences of the Incarnation we celebrated on 25 December. There is a "reversal of the ritual current" - previously, as we see most clearly in the Book of Leviticus, ritually clean objects or individuals are made unclean by contact with the ritually unclean; now, Jesus, going about his earthly ministry, makes everything he comes into contact with clean and sacred. Later we will see how he touches biers, lepers, bleeding women, corpses and so forth and cures them. He goes about restoring the status of individuals who are marginalised, persecuted or despised: sinners are forgiven, the sick are healed and the possessed are freed from demonic possession. The Kingdom of Satan is under attack and Jesus will not stop until he has destroyed it. Today he attends a wedding and thereby makes it and all of the other aspects of it, including sex, family and children a part of the sacramental economy and therefore his reign. As a result, we Christians are not anxious about the possibility of the triumph of evil. We know that Christ, in the resurrection, completed and made secure his victory over sin and death for all time. My task is to cooperate with his grace and vindicate his victory and ever-expanding reign in my own life, families and society until all is fulfilled: "Then comes the end, when he (Jesus) hands over the kingdom to the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death." (1 Cor. 15: 24-26)