Luminous Mysteries

 Jesus, the Son of God, went to John the Baptist to be baptized. John felt unworthy even to untie Jesus’ sandals, but Jesus stood in line with sinners and presented himself to John to be baptized. At that moment, as Jesus stood in the water, the heavens opened and God the Father said, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:13-17). 

 This is it. Jesus’ first public miracle. And it takes place rather quietly at a wedding. When the bride and groom ran out of wine, Mary took their need to Jesus. And he turned water into wine, a wine that was far better than the wine they had already served, and more wine than they could ever drink. The Our God is a God of abundance. Just as Jesus abundantly supplied more wine when it was in short supply at the wedding in Cana, he wants to provide abundantly for whatever is in short supply in our lives today. 

 When Jesus spoke about the kingdom, he perplexed people. They had a certain image of God and his ways, and Jesus turned them upside down and inside out. In our own ways, we too have images of God and ways of thinking about how God does things that he wants to turn upside down—which as it turns out will be right side up. 

 Jesus wants to show us what is possible. Too often our vision is too earthbound. He wants to open our hearts and minds to all that is possible far beyond our limited thinking. The disciples, like you and I, could only see Jesus in a very limited way because of their limits. Jesus took Peter, John, and James up on the mountain so God the Father could open their spiritual eyes wider than ever before and see Jesus in all his glory. 

 Do you know what happened at the Last Supper? Most of us would say yes, and then recite the facts and mechanics of that historic experience. But really, what we don’t know about the Last Supper dwarfs what we do know. What we don’t know about God makes what we do know about him look like a grain of sand in the Sahara desert.