The first public miracle Jesus performs is tremendously significant both because of what occurs and because of the context in which our Lord works. Changing water into wine is an indication of the good things God wants to bestow on the world, and the quantity (nearly 200 gallons) and quality of the wine (the best wine, saved for last) tells us something of God’s generosity to humanity. But for our purposes today, let’s focus on the wedding feast as the setting for this first miracle. To do so, we should keep in mind that the life and mission of Jesus is to restore what is broken in humanity. Before beginning his ministry, He goes to the Jordan River to be baptized. There, He who has no sin to repent of, enters the waters of baptism and imbues those waters with the power to sanctify and to wash sin away. Just as the Israelites crossed the Red Sea to escape slavery in Egypt, the Incarnate Son of God crosses the waters to lead us out of slavery to sin. Sin, however, did not begin in Egypt, but in Eden. And sin began in the context of marriage.
The great American preacher, Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, meditates on the wedding feast at Cana with a unique insight. Our Lord’s words to Mary might seem jarring: “Woman, how does your concern affect me?” Sheen gives a literal translation to these words, rather than the more literary one we hear today. Sheen suggests it be read as “Woman, what to you to me.” In English, this might be grammatically incoherent, but it speaks to a very important reality. Let’s go back to Eden for a moment. Adam and Eve disobey God, and when asked what they have done, Adam famously answers “The woman you put here with me gave me the fruit.” With that sentence, Adam rejects his wife, what she has given to him, and the one who brought them together in marriage. Now at the wedding feast at Cana, as the wine – the sign of God’s abundance, goodness, and blessing – runs short, Jesus, the New Adam, says to His mother Mary, the New Eve, “What to you to me. My hour has not yet come.” In other words, although the time for the full gift of salvation I am here to pour out has not yet arrived, what is yours is mine, your concern is my concern. Eve shared her disobedience with Adam. The New Eve, obedient to God’s will – “Let it be done to me according to your word” – shares her obedience with the New Adam, who in turn, humbles himself in His Divinity to be obedient to His human mother. In this episode, then, Jesus is beginning the work of restoration in that foundational human relationship of marriage. “What to you to me” becomes God’s gift to married couples, as marriage is raised from a natural institution to the dignity of a sacrament. From here on out, we must understand marriage as a privileged channel of God’s grace, binding man and woman together in a profound union and a shared mission.
For this reason, the Church teaches that Catholics ordinarily marry in the Church, asking that this same blessing given to the couple at Cana be given to them, as well. If a wedding is desired outside of a Catholic Church, we are taught to seek the Church’s blessing nevertheless. Often couples who marry in a civil ceremony do not realize that the sacrament of marriage is still available to them. The grace of the wedding feast at Cana is still offered. The Church wants to bless marriages, wants marriage to be revered and lived as a sacramental grace. It is in the sacrament of matrimony that Jesus turns the accusing fingers Adam and Eve pointed at each other into hands open in receptive love. With this receptivity and love restored by God’s grace, man and woman can take up the original mission given them by the Lord, to be co-creators with Him, to be the perfect complementary help to one another, and to be the living image and channel of the love of God in the world. Marriage matters very much, to you, to me, to the Church…and to the Lord, who comes to restore all things.
