Wedding at Cana
Fr. Dwight Campbell
01/19/2025
Homily 2nd Sunday Yr C: Wedding at Cana
In our Gospel today from St. John is we hear how Jesus changed water into wine – His first miracle as He begins His public ministry.
Why did Jesus choose to perform His first miracle at a wedding?
We get a hint as to why, from our first reading, from the prophet Isaiah.
A number of Old Testament prophets referred to the Old Covenant between God and His people Israel as a wedding bond: God was the Bridegroom and Israel was the bride.
The prophet Isaiah, speaking of the Israelite nation, says: “The Lord makes your land his spouse. As a young man marries a virgin, your Builder [i.e., God] shall marry you; as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride, so shall your God rejoice in you.”
The New Covenant was instituted by Jesus Christ; and as St. Paul tells us, Jesus is the bridegroom and His Church is His spouse, . . . His bride.
In many parables, Jesus refers to Heaven as a wedding feast, to which all people are invited – not just the Jews, but every people from every nation, because all people are called to become members of Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church, and partake of the heavenly Wedding Banquet.
Jesus instituted the New Covenant, with Himself as the Bridegroom and the Church as His beloved bride, when He sacrificed Himself on the Cross and shed His Precious Blood for our sins.
And the night before He died, at the Last Supper, Jesus offered the Sacrifice of His Body and Blood under the form of bread and wine; and He commanded His Apostles, “Do this in memory of me.”
This is precisely what we do at every Mass, commemorating the Sacrifice of Christ’s Body and Blood on the Cross, in the same manner He offered it at the Last Supper.
This means that we participate on earth – right now – in the heavenly Wedding Feast. That’s what the Mass is.
This helps to explain why at His first miracle, Jesus changed water to wine; and why the headwaiter, tasting the water turned to wine, says, “Everyone serves the good one first, and then when people drunk freely, an inferior one; but you have kept the good wine until now.”
The Precious Blood of Jesus Christ, the Bridegroom, shed for our sins, is the “good wine.” And every time we receive Holy Communion, we receive the full Jesus: His Body and Blood, soul and divinity.
The water that was changed into wine was in five stone jars. I was in Cana some years back on pilgrimage, and offered Mass there. I saw replicas of the stone jars – they were quite large.
St. John points out that the stone jars “filled to the brim.” Why? To symbolize the superabundant graces that Jesus merited for us when He shed His Blood for us on the Cross; and the graces without measure that are offered to us every time we receive the Body and Blood of Jesus in Holy Communion.
One more aspect of this miracle is worth commenting on: the presence of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Christ’s first miracle is performed through her motherly intercession.
Mary says to Him simply, “They have no wine.” Jesus responds, “My hour has not yet come,” and yet still does not refuse His mother’s request.
Significantly, Jesus does not refer to Mary as His Mother, but rather as “woman.” Why?
This is a reference to the first announcement of the Good News, called the Protoevangelium: Gen 3:15: After Adam and Eve sinned, God speaks to the serpent in these prophetic words:
“I will put enmities between you and the woman, between your seed/offspring and hers, and she will crush your head.” Mary is that woman, and her seed/offspring is Jesus.
This prophecy is a promise of the Redeemer, who would establish the New and Eternal Covenant in His own Blood – and a revelation that in God’s plan of redemption and salvation, Mary is united with Jesus.
Mary’s presence and intercession for the couple that has run out of wine at this wedding feast, is a foreshadowing of her role in God’s salvific plan:
Mary, now in Heaven, is our motherly intercessor. We go to Jesus through her, and she prays for us, assists us in getting to Heaven.
Also noteworthy are Mary’s words to the servants: “Do whatever he tells you.” These are the last words that Mary speaks in the Gospels – and they are filled with significance. Yes, our goal in life as baptized members of Christ’s Body, the Church, is to follow Jesus, to do whatever He tells us.
Mary is not only our perfect model in following Jesus; she intercedes on our behalf, and assists us in imitating her Son. In fact, as our heavenly Mother she forms us into a likeness of her Son, Jesus – that’s what mothers do, form their children.
The Church teaches that Mary is the Mediatrix of all the grace of Jesus Christ.
Pope Benedict XVI really sums up the entire Tradition on this point:
“There is no grace in the history of salvation that has not come to us but through the motherly intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary.”
Let us go to Jesus through Mary, let us follow her command always to “Do whatever he tells you.”