7 February 2027 · Syro-Malankara Rite
Open in the Daily Word appAlso: Syro-Malabar Rite · Latin Rite · മലയാളം
“Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.” John 2:11
The Malankara Church begins the Great Fast with a wedding. On Kothine Sunday we read the miracle at Cana, where Jesus changed water into wine. It may seem strange to start a season of fasting at a feast, but it is deeply wise. The Fast is not about sadness; it is about transformation. The water of our ordinary, tasteless lives can become the wine of God's joy, if we do what Mary says: “Do whatever he tells you.”
The prophets tell us what kind of fast God wants. Joel: “Return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing.” Isaiah: “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice… to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house?” Fasting from food is meant to open our hearts to God and our hands to the poor.
St Paul shows the inner work of Lent: “Put to death whatever in you is earthly… clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience… Above all, clothe yourselves with love.” The Fast is a change of clothes: putting off the old self and putting on Christ. Acts reminds us that it was in Antioch, the mother Church of our Syriac tradition, that the disciples were first called Christians.
The jars at Cana were filled “up to the brim” with water at Jesus' word. In these fifty days, let us fill our jars: with prayer, fasting, almsgiving and the Word of God. At the end of the Fast, at Qyomtho, Christ will give us the best wine, kept until now: the joy of his Resurrection.
Theme: “The Fast begins at a wedding.”
Our Great Fast does not begin with ashes but with a wedding at Cana. The Church tells us that Lent is not sadness but the joyful return of the Bride to the Bridegroom, who turns the water of our efforts into the wine of his grace.
“Yet even now, says the LORD, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing.” Joel 2:12–13
“When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” … His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”” John 2:3, 5
Apply: Name the “wine” that has run out in your life (joy, peace, love) and bring it to Jesus.
“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free … Is it not to share your bread with the hungry?” Isaiah 58:6–7
“But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” Matthew 6:17–18
Apply: Set aside the money saved by fasting for the poor.
“I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.” Genesis 9:13
““You have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.” John 2:10–11
Apply: Fill your “jars” this Lent: daily prayer, Scripture, fasting and charity, and trust Jesus to transform them.
The Fast is a wedding feast in preparation: the Bridegroom is coming to his Passion and Resurrection.
Let us return with all our hearts, fast as God desires, and let him change our water into wine.
Take-home resolution: Choose three Lenten practices (prayer, fasting, almsgiving) and write them down today.
Dear brothers and sisters, today our Church begins the Great Fast, and it begins it at a wedding. On Kothine Sunday we read how Jesus, at Cana, changed water into wine. Why begin fifty days of fasting with a wedding feast? Because the Fast is not a season of gloom. It is a season of transformation.
At Cana the wine ran out. Mary noticed and said to the servants: “Do whatever he tells you.” That is the best advice for Lent. The servants did a simple thing: they filled the jars with water, up to the brim. And Jesus changed that water into the best wine. In this Fast, let us fill our jars: with prayer, with fasting, with the Word of God, with works of mercy. And let Jesus change the water of our lives into wine.
The prophets tell us what true fasting is. Joel says: “Return to me with all your heart; rend your hearts and not your clothing.” Isaiah says: “Is not this the fast that I choose: to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house?” Fasting from food is not a diet; it makes room in our hearts for God and in our hands for the poor.
Tonight the special prayers of the Fast begin, and tomorrow we celebrate Shubkono, when we ask forgiveness of one another. Let each family make a simple plan: one fast, one prayer, one act of charity. And at the end of these fifty days, at Qyomtho, Jesus will give us the best wine, kept until now: the joy of his Resurrection. Amen.
Children, today Lent begins! And our Gospel is about a wedding party. At the party the wine ran out. Mary said: “Do whatever Jesus tells you.”
The servants filled six big jars with water, and Jesus changed it into wonderful wine! In Lent Jesus wants to change us too: to make us kinder, more patient, more prayerful.
What can you give up this Lent? Sweets? Television? And what good thing can you do? Let's say: “Jesus, change my heart!”
Lord Jesus, at Cana you changed water into wine and revealed your glory. As we begin the Great Fast, change our hearts: teach us to do whatever you tell us, to fast with love, to share with the poor, and to reach with joy the feast of your Resurrection. Amen.
Our Church opens the Great Fast at a wedding. On Kothine Sunday, the Sunday of Cana, the first thing we are shown is not ashes but wine. The season that follows is meant to change us, as water was changed, and today's readings teach how.
The lectionary is full. The Evening Gospel has the Good Shepherd in the Temple at the feast of Dedication: “My sheep hear my voice” (John 10:27). The Old Testament lessons give the covenant sign after the flood, “I have set my bow in the clouds” (Genesis 9:13), the commandments at Sinai (Exodus 20:7–22), and Joel's call, “rend your hearts and not your clothing” (Joel 2:13). In Acts we meet the Church of Antioch, “and it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called ‘Christians’” (Acts 11:26). That city is the mother of our own Antiochene tradition.
Three readings are studied here. In Isaiah, God tells a disappointed people what kind of fast he wants. In Colossians, Paul describes the change of clothes that begins at Baptism. In John, Jesus turns water for purification into the wine of a wedding. The key words of this Sunday are fast, clothing and sign.
Setting.
Of the Old Testament lessons this one speaks most directly to the season, and like Cana it ends in delight. Many scholars think that the last chapters of Isaiah (56–66) address the community after the return from exile in Babylon, about the late sixth century BC. Life was hard, the rebuilding was slow, and the great promises seemed unfulfilled.
Just before our reading the people complain: “Why do we fast, but you do not see?” (58:3). God's reply is sharp: on your fast day you serve your own interest and oppress your workers (58:3–4). Today's passage is the second half of that answer. The prophet does not attack fasting. He tells them what fasting is for.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” (58:6)
Four verbs of releasing. It is a fast from holding others down. Luke shows Jesus reading Isaiah at Nazareth, and a phrase from this very verse is woven into the text he reads (Luke 4:18).
“Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?” (58:7)
The list comes very close to the judgment scene in Matthew 25:35–36. The last clause reaches home: the poor include relatives we would prefer not to see.
“Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.” (58:9)
In verse 3 the people were complaining that God did not see them. The answer is here. When the people turn to the needy, God says the words that a servant says to his master: Here I am.
“if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.” (58:10)
Light comes as we give, not after we have sorted ourselves out. What we go looking for in the Fast often arrives while we are serving someone else.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism teaches that penance is first of all conversion of the heart, without which fasting and mortification remain empty (CCC 1430), and that it is expressed above all in fasting, prayer and almsgiving (CCC 1434). Its list of the corporal works of mercy, feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, clothing the naked, could have come from this page (CCC 2447). St John Chrysostom, preaching in Antioch during the Fast of the year 387, tells his hearers to show that they are fasting by their works: pity the poor man and be reconciled with your enemy (in substance; Homilies on the Statues 3). St Leo the Great says in his Lenten sermons that what we deny ourselves should become food for the poor (in substance).
Setting.
The letter names Paul as its author, though many scholars think a disciple wrote it in his name; the Church receives it as inspired Scripture either way. The letter's first half shows who Christ is, and then, from 3:1, how those who “have been raised with Christ” ought to live. These lines read like instruction to the newly baptized.
Some in Colossae seem to have been attracted to rules about food and festivals, and to severe practices that promised to control the body (2:16–23). Paul says that such practices have no real power (2:23). The change comes from a death and a new life in Christ. This is a useful warning at the start of a Fast.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices” (3:9)
Paul's reason for the moral command is sacramental. Your Baptism already took off that garment. St Cyril of Jerusalem told the newly baptized that taking off their tunic before the font was an image of putting off the old self (in substance).
“In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!” (3:11)
The Scythians were regarded in that world as the wildest of all. Every wall that the old life thought normal is named here and is taken down.
“just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.” (3:13)
This is the measure of forgiveness. It is exactly what our Church puts before us at the Shubkono on the Monday after this Sunday, when we ask each other's pardon before going on.
“Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” (3:14)
Love is the outer garment and belt that holds all the rest in place. The Malayalam POC says “practise” (പരിശീലിക്കുവിൻ), and that is true as well: love is a skill to be learned by doing.
“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly;” (3:16)
“Dwell” is the same family of words as “house”. Scripture is to be at home among us, and here it is sung as well as read. Our Syriac tradition has always taught its faith through hymns.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism says that charity is the bond of all the virtues, and quotes v. 14 (CCC 1827). The white garment given at Baptism symbolizes that the baptized person has put on Christ (CCC 1243). On the Church's song, it teaches that singing is bound up with the liturgy (CCC 1156–1158), and it recalls the apostle's words on psalms, hymns and spiritual songs (CCC 2641). The tenth commandment's warning about greed takes up Paul's concern (CCC 2536).
Setting.
John calls this the first of Jesus' “signs”. It comes after the calling of the first disciples (1:35–51). “On the third day” may simply count from the last scene, and readers have also heard in it a first hint of the third day of the Resurrection. A village wedding in Galilee could last for days, and the wine was the family's honour. To run out would have brought real shame on the hosts.
John never gives the mother of Jesus her name. She appears twice in this Gospel, at Cana and at the Cross (19:25–27), and both times Jesus calls her “Woman”. The first sign and the final hour are joined by her presence.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.”” (2:3)
She does not command, nor does she even ask. She simply lays the need before him. This is one of the best lessons in prayer in the Gospels.
“His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”” (2:5)
These are the last words of Mary recorded in John. They recall Pharaoh's words about Joseph in the famine: “what he says to you, do” (Genesis 41:55). All Marian devotion is meant to lead here.
“Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons.” (2:6)
Stone jars were favoured for purification water, because Jewish law held that stone did not take on impurity. By the NRSV's figures this is at least a hundred and twenty gallons. It is far more than any wedding needs, and overflowing abundance is one of the marks of God's new age (Amos 9:13; Joel 3:18).
“Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim.” (2:7)
The servants do the ordinary work, and they carry water without knowing what is coming. Jesus makes use of what we bring, and it is always water. In the Fast, too, our part is to fill the jars to the brim.
“But you have kept the good wine until now.”” (2:10)
The steward does not know how true his words are. God has kept the best for the last, in his Son. These words may also be heard from Qyomtho looking back on the Fast.
“and his disciples believed in him.” (2:11)
The purpose of the sign. At the Cross this faith will be tested, and the mother who is here will still be there.
How the Church reads it.
The Church sees in Cana Christ's confirmation of the goodness of marriage (CCC 1613). She also reads in it the Eucharist: the miracle announces the hour of Jesus' glorification and the new wine that has become his Blood (CCC 1335). The Catechism says that at Cana the mother asks her Son for the needs of a wedding feast, and that this is the sign of another feast, the wedding of the Lamb (CCC 2618). St Cyril of Jerusalem argues to the newly baptized that he who once changed water into wine can surely change wine into his Blood (in substance). St Augustine remarks that the Lord who made wine in these jars does the same every year in the vines, and we have stopped being amazed (in substance). St Ephrem, in a hymn on Cana, invites the Lord to a wedding feast of song, and asks him to fill his mouth with praise as he filled those jars (in substance; Hymns on Virginity 33).
Why does the Great Fast begin with a wedding?
Because the Fast is a road to a feast, and the Church wants us to know where we are going. Jesus himself calls his presence a wedding (Mark 2:19–20). Beginning at Cana teaches that the aim of penance is not gloom but change. It is the water that is changed, and we are the water.
Was Jesus being rude to his mother?
No. “Woman” was a respectful way to speak, and he uses it again from the Cross, as he entrusts her to the beloved disciple. The Greek phrase in v. 4, which the POC translates literally (എനിക്കും നിനക്കും എന്ത്?), can sound like distance. But the phrase is an idiom whose force depends on the tone and setting, and Mary plainly did not hear it as a refusal: she turns straight to the servants. Jesus acts on her word, and the Church has always found in this the power of her intercession (CCC 2618).
Does changing the water for purification mean that Jewish worship was worthless?
No. John shows that what God gave to Israel comes to fullness in Jesus, and that fullness is a gift, not a verdict. The Church says that God's gifts and calling to the Jewish people are irrevocable (Romans 11:29; CCC 839), and that Christians share a great spiritual patrimony with them (Nostra Aetate 4). Jesus and the disciples at the table, and the mother who noticed the wine, were Jews at a Jewish wedding.
Kothine opens the Sundays of the Great Fast in our Malankara tradition. The Sundays ahead read the Lord's healings: Garbo next week is the healing of the leper, and M'shario after it the healing of the paralytic. So the season moves from the wine of Cana to the bodies and souls that Christ restores, and it goes on to Holy Week and Qyomtho. On the Monday after Kothine comes the Shubkono, the service of forgiveness, when we ask pardon of one another. Colossians 3:13 could stand over the church door that day. Every Holy Qurbono of the Fast is a small Cana: at the altar wine becomes his Blood, and we are asked once more to do whatever he tells us.