The Transformation of Suffering
Reflections on September 11
& the Wedding Feast at Cana in Galilee

The Wedding Feast of Cana

Do Whatever He Tells You

    At this point, the Blessed Mother turns to the waiters, saying, "Do whatever he tells you." In saying this, she gives Jesus the maximum freedom to do whatever he likes. He can tell the waiters, "Do nothing," or he can tell them to do something, which is what he actually does: "Fill the six jars that are sitting there with water."

    I suppose Jesus could also have provided the wine in another way. He didn't necessarily have to work a miracle. For example, he could have sent the disciples to buy more wine at a shop downtown. In any case, he realized that the issue was whether or not to work a miracle that would transform the hearts of his disciples. Thus the disciples would become faith-filled students ready to be trained as apostles of the Word of God.

    Let us continue with the story.

    Mary said to the waiters, "Do whatever he tells you." This is a good piece of advice for any occasion. In this case, Jesus summons the waiters and tells them to fill the six empty jars with water. Six is the number of creation in Jewish numerology, since in six days, according to the Book of Genesis, the universe was created.

    For those familiar with that symbology, the six jars represent not only the first creation, but also the previous covenants between God and Israel: the Abrahamic covenant and the covenant with Moses on Mount Sinai. They stand for the revelation of God that was originally offered to the Jewish people, and which they, as best they could, faithfully fulfilled by bringing the knowledge of the one true God into human history.

    When the six jars are filled with water, and Jesus says to the waiters, "Take some to the headwaiter and see what he thinks of it." The six jars contain some twenty-five gallons each. That is a lot of wine, even for a wedding-enough for a small army. The waiters take a portion of the contents of one of the jars to the headwaiter. He has no idea where the wine has come from. The headwaiter is so impressed that he immediately calls the groom over, and makes this little quip: "Most people serve the good wine first, and then when everyone has been drinking for a while, they then serve the less good. But you have saved the best wine until now!" It is a charming compliment that must have made the young bridegroom feel very happy.

    However, the compliment has cosmic ramifications. The water transformed into wine symbolizes the overflowing infusion of the Holy Spirit that will occur at Pentecost as a result of Christ's passion, death, and resurrection. The wine, with its heady, exuberant, and inebriating quality and delicious taste, symbolically replaces the Old Law with its strict rules.

    In this way, we can see that the very objects that Jesus uses to manifest the changing of water into wine are providing us with a whole theology of the New Testament. The New Covenant, as he calls it, is a transmission of the divine nature by means of which human nature is not merely improved but made new, changed in a way that produces a new creation. The wine represents the spirit of the gospel that Christ is bringing into the world and that he intends to communicate with the help of his disciples.

    As Jesus indicates in another place, new wine has to be put into new wineskins (Matthew 9:17). The old structures will not work. The Spirit does not like to be confined in a jar or a box, but is constantly bursting out of all kinds of human limitations to bring the love of God and the energy of divine life into the world. As Jesus says in another place, "I have come to throw a firebrand upon the earth-that is my mission! And oh, how I wish it were already in a blaze" (Luke 12:49).

    Thus the wedding feast suddenly changes from being a homey concern that Mary had for her recently married friends into an extraordinary revelation of the Christian dispensation. Notice the final sentence: "Jesus revealed his glory." This is to say that Jesus revealed the divinity dwelling in himself (this is what "glory" normally means in the New Testament) "and his disciples believed in him."

More information can be obtained by reading the book The Transformation of Suffering by Fr. Thomas Keating.  It is offered in our Book Store.