We take for granted the slow miracle whereby water in the irrigation of a vineyard becomes wine. It is only when Christ turns water into wine, in quick motion, as it were, that we stand amazed.

The water a cow drinks turns to milk;
The water a snake drinks turns to poison.

In Cana lived a Palestinian merchant who gave wine to all comers. “Wine for everyone,” he cried into the street. “On the house.” He wore an open jacket and a blue shirt buttoned to the top. He brandished a silver tray full of tiny wineglasses. My friends would not enter his shop. They thought it was a trick: Put a man through life for sixty years and he is generous to strangers. I took a glass of red wine from the silver tray and drank it down. In my ordinary life, I don’t drink wine. Fine: This man was supposed to be selling souvenirs to tourists, which he was not doing, either. We ignored his merchandise. Leaning in his open doorway, we talked; we traded cigarettes and smoked.

Across the steep street we saw the church at Cana, built where Luke’s [sic] gospel says Christ turned water into wine for a wedding. Like 130,000 other Palestinians in Galilee, this shopkeeper was a Christian. His two brothers were priests, as it happened; his two sisters were nuns. His bit was giving away wine.

Ephrem, “Hymn on Faith: The Wedding Feast,” p. 110
R. A. K. Mason, “Footnote to John ii.4,” p. 109
Carlos Pellicer, “Sunday,” p. 112
Rainer Maria Rilke, “On the Marriage at Cana,” p. 107

“The Maidservant Remembers,” (p. 40)
… All I know is, I did what he told me. And you know what? I think the water did, too.

“The Bride Remembers,” (p. 41)
… and hope spread like fire in my veins. Perhaps the future was not as empty as I had thought. Perhaps this marriage held not so meager a prospect. … God grant us long life together, and many surprises to encounter, together along the way.

“A [Roman] Guest Remembers,” (p. 42)
… It was the first time we felt welcome in a Jewish home, invited to a party that seemed suddenly, for a moment, to include the whole world.

“Nathanael Remembers,” (p. 43)
… and someone splashed a bit on his tunic, where a stain spread dark as blood.

It is not by accident that the Gospel of John weaves into the very earliest period of Jesus’ public life this human-interest story of the wedding that comes across with the lilt of springtime. The intention is to depict a contrast with the winter of his austerities in the forbidding wilderness of Judea. The story shows in bold relief how Jesus had survived the shortcomings of the wilderness and how he had moved beyond the ill-humored image of God upheld by the sectarians there. Jesus thoroughly enjoyed the wedding party of the young lovers.

It is worth our while to compare his laughing face … with the face of John the Baptist, the man … haranguing people forever about the wrath of God. This story discovers to us the beaming joie de vivre of Jesus, who had moved beyond the wilderness and beyond the religious brotherhood of John …

“… the preaching of John was a burden heavy with the old-time threat of utter destruction. But the preaching of Jesus is a song of joy.” To paraphrase a certain verse in Mark, the face of John the Baptist’s disciples personified sobriety itself, whereas the disciples of Jesus were like guests at a wedding party (Mark 2:18)

Why does he who refused
to raise the smell of bread
out of innocent stones
now make water blush
in his presence

Because, the wine sang out,
Israel and Yahweh
have always loved
as bride and groom.

Once when our eyes were clean as noon, our rooms
Filled with the joys of Cana’s feast:
For Jesus came, and His disciples, and His Mother,
And after them the singers
And some men with violins.

Once when our minds were Galilees,
And clean as skies our faces,
Our simple rooms were charmed with sun.
Our thoughts went in and out in whiter coats than God’s disciples’,
In Cana’s crowded rooms, at Cana’s tables.

Nor did we seem to fear the wine would fail:
For ready, in a row, to fill with water and a miracle,
We saw our earthen vessels, waiting empty.
What wine those humble waterjars fortell!

Wine for the ones who, bended to the dirty earth,
Have feared, since lovely Eden, the sun’s fire,
Yet hardly mumble, in their dusty mouths, one prayer.

Wine for old Adam, digging in the briars!

Why wonder about the loaves and the fishes?
If you say the right words, the wine expands.
If you say them with love
and the felt ferocity of that love
and the felt necessity of that love,
the fish explode into many.
Imagine him, speaking,
and don’t worry about what is reality,
or what is plain, or what is mysterious.
If you were there, it was all those things.
If you can imagine it, it is all those things.
Eat, drink, be happy.
Accept the miracle.
Accept, too, each spoken word
spoken with love.

… she spoke for all of us

Might there be a bridegroom yet beyond
the graveyard at whose feast the wine
flows freely and forever blesses,
kisses every tasting lip with
sweet surprising laughter? (p. 43)

“Cana”
Water wines so easy really (p. 60)

And Mary’s words to Jesus, “They have no wine,” constitute not merely a simple observation of fact, but an ironic judgment on the barrenness of much of the religion of that day. “They have no wine.”

Yet are we today really superior? Can we honestly claim, as followers of the one who turned water into wine, to be transformed people as radiant and vibrant and brimming with the joy of life as a glass of rich, red wine? For most of our churches, most of the time, isn’t Mary’s comment also true? “They have no wine.”

A) wine in our worship
B) wine in our witness
C) wine in ourselves and in our living

Our Lady did nothing else in Cana but thought of the needs of others and made their needs known to Jesus.

St. John tells how, at Cana’s wedding feast,
The water-pots poured wine in such amount
That by his sober count
There were a hundred gallons at the least.

It made no earthly sense, unless to show
How whatsoever love elects to bless
Brims with a sweet excess
That can without depletion overflow.

Which is to say that what love sees is true;
That the world’s fullness is not made but found.
Life hungers to abound
And pour its plenty out for such as you.

Now, if your loves will lend an ear to mine,
I toast you both, good son and dear new daughter.
May you not lack for water,
And may that water smack of Cana’s wine.

Jesus first miracle did not free anyone from the pain of serious illness or wipe away the distress of hunger or thirst. Instead, it was lighthearted, an occasion of happiness.

The following anecdote is recounted by Comas Indicopleuestes (ca. 530) concerning Theodore of Mopsuestia (d. 428):

“Rabbula previously showed much friendship toward the famous interpreter (Theodore) and studied his works. Yet when, having gone to Constantinople to attend the Council of the Fathers (381) he was accused of striking priests, and he responded that Our Lord had also struck when he entered the temple, the Interpreter arose and reprimanded him saying, ‘Our Lord did not do that; he only spoke to the men, saying “take that away,” and turned over the tables. But he drove out the bullocks and the sheep with the blows of his whip.’”

Try to learn tranquility, to live in the present a part of every day. Sometimes say to yourself: “Now. What is happening now? This friend is talking. I am quiet. There is endless time. I hear it, every word.” Then suddenly you begin to hear not only what people are saying, but what they are trying to say, and you sense the whole truth about them. And you sense existence, not piecemeal, not this object and that, but as a translucent whole.