His Excellency,
The Most Reverend Edward K. Braxton, Ph.D., S.T.D.
Diocese of Belleville
Do Whatever He Tells You To Do!
Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
January 12, 2025, 9:00 AM Mass
St. Luke Parish, Belleville
(This is the text as originally written. During the actual delivery, some passages were omitted and other comments were added spontaneously. Nota bene: This text has not been thoroughly proofread. Therefore, there may be errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation.)
Dear People of God:
“Do whatever He tells you to do!”
What are we to make of this mysterious, nameless woman standing at the crossroads of history, telling everyone to do whatever Jesus tells us to do?
This morning, John’s gospel (2:1-11) tells us that Jesus performed the first of His seven SIGNS at a wedding feast in Cana in Galilee. John does not call it a miracle! He calls it one of the seven SIGNS of His unique identity. The story begins with, “The mother of Jesus was at a wedding in Cana.” John’s gospel never calls her by name. Then, almost as an afterthought, John tells us, “Jesus and His disciples were also there.”
When the wine runs out, this anonymous woman utters only two sentences. She tells her son, “They have no wine.” Somewhat sharply, Jesus replies, “Woman, (not ‘mom,’ not even ‘mother,’) how does your concern affect Me? My hour has not yet come.” Ignoring her son’s sharp words, His mother tells the servers, “Do whatever He tells you to do.” She never utters another word in this gospel. The head waiter is shocked when the water becomes wine of the highest quality. You may wrongly ask, “How did Jesus do that?” But the question that we, the Church, and the whole world should be asking is, “Are we doing whatever Jesus tells us to do?”
What does Jesus tell us to do?
“Love God with your whole being and love your neighbor as you love yourself. Love one another as I have loved you. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. Forgive and love your enemies. Judge not lest you be judged. Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone! Be merciful! Be peacemakers!”
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The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born 96 years ago, Wednesday, January 15th, and was brutally murdered at 39 on April 4th, 1968. He died trying to end racial prejudice in the United States, proclaiming love to be the only force strong enough to turn an enemy into a friend! Was not his struggle for all people to be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, his way of heeding the words of Jesus’s mother, “Do whatever He tells you to do?”
A number of Supreme Court and state court rulings in the last ten years have reversed or significantly weakened legislations that were designed to counter the moral evil of racial prejudice that Reverend King preached against. Can anyone argue credibly that reversing fair housing, fair employment, fair voting, and fair education rights laws are examples of doing whatever Jesus tells us to do?
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Wednesday, January 22nd will mark the 52nd anniversary of the 1973 Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision, declaring abortion legal in the United States because a woman has the constitutional right to privacy and to control her own body.
This ruling, rejecting the dignity and value of every human life from conception to natural death, has led to the destruction of over the 50 million developing human lives in the womb. After fierce debates about the legality and the morality of the Roe v. Wade decision, in the June 2022 case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Court overturned Roe v. Wade, declaring that this issue must be determined by each state, resulting in different, conflicting laws from state to state. The ongoing national quarrel concerning the legal, political, and ethical questions regarding abortion added to the fierce, conflicting voices in the recent presidential election. Would the abortion debate be different if the American people, our courts, our government leaders, and our media seriously heeded the words of Jesus’s mother, “Do whatever He tells you to do?”
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On Wednesday, Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed of Qatar announced that negotiators from Israel and Hamas had finally agreed to a 42-day ceasefire that hopefully is beginning even as I am speaking, followed by a gradual release in Gaza of nearly 100 hostages, living and dead, including 7 Americans, and the release of numerous Palestinian prisoners. This ceasefire, implementing the proposal made by the President of the United States last May, raises hopes that a 15-month horrific war, provoked by Hamas’s slaughter of 1400 innocent Israelis, that killed 47 thousand Palestinians and destroyed most of their homes, could be approaching the beginning of the end. Many uncertainties remain on both sides. This fragile ceasefire is fraught with peril.
But if Hamas and the Israeli government, residing in what we call the “Holy Land,” had listened to the voice of the woman at Cana, “Do whatever He tells you to do,” there would have been no Hamas attack October 7th, 2023. The same would be true in Ukraine if Vladimir Putin of Russia had listened to her voice. (“Love your enemies, do good to those who offend you.”)
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Tomorrow, January 20th, the day the country honors a murdered man who had a dream of harmony and understanding – dream that remains a dream deferred, the 47th President of United States will be inaugurated to preside over our deeply divided nation (Many voters argue that he is the worst President ever. Other voters argue that he is the best President ever. He himself has suggested that he was a better President than George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, or Abraham Lincoln). Is it possible to hope that the President, his cabinet, the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the American people will consider doing whatever Jesus tells us to do? “Love one another as I have loved you. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”
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Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ:
Many Catholics with a strong devotion to the mother of Jesus under her titles, “the Blessed Virgin Mary,” “Our Lady,” or “Our Blessed Mother” might find it quite odd that John never uses any of these devotional titles; he never even calls her Mary. It may seem almost irreverent for John to simply call her “the mother of Jesus.” But he is calling us to see this young Jewish woman with theological clarity. The only reason we seek to imitate her is that she is the mother of Jesus. Her role is to push us out of our comfort zone, not to immerse us in images of a woman floating amid the clouds, surrounded by cherubs in a stained-glass window. It is Mary, the mother of the Lord, human, like us, and not a goddess, who instructs us each day to “Do whatever He tell you to do.”
In recent days, we have all been reminded of the towering example of the humble Christian witness of a peanut farmer from Plaines, Georgia. No matter your political party, no matter your evaluation of his four years in the White House, it is difficult to argue that James Earl Carter, Jr. did not commit himself to following Mary’s instruction, “Do whatever He tells you to do.” Though he spent four of his one hundred years in the White House and four years in the Governor’s Mansion, he considered the other ninety-two years to be more important, including his seventy-seven years of Christian marriage to his remarkable wife, Rosalynn. When asked why he served as a Deacon and taught Catechism classes at his local Baptist Church into his nineties, why he built homes for the homeless with his bare hands with Habitat for Humanity, why he forcefully opposed all forms of segregation and discrimination, why he had such deep respect for women and children, why he worked for the eradication of deadly diseases, why he challenged oppressive political systems around the world?
He gave one reply: “I am a Christian. I have been a practicing Christian all my life. My faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I can, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have, to try to make a difference in the name of Jesus Christ.”
After you receive the great gift of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, pray that God will give you the strength to obey the command of the woman of few words at Cana. “O merciful God, help me to know whatever Jesus is telling me to do in my daily life and give me the courage to do it.” Then we might all have a greater chance of experiencing a peaceful world and bright, blessed days and dark, sacred nights in this New Year!
Praised be Jesus Christ. Both Now and forever. AMEN!