"Do whatever He tells you"

Almost two thousand years ago, in a small town in Galilee, a man and woman received each other in marriage. They were Jewish, worshipers of the One True God, and their wedding was typically Jewish. Thus, it was joyful. Worshiping the Creator of all good things, they knew how to celebrate the goodness of marriage, and they held a feast several days long to do so. Further, just as today brides and grooms find joy in inviting to their wedding the church ladies who knew them when they were little, this bride and groom invited a particularly devote woman whom they had known. This woman, a widow, had a son, so they invited him as well. Finally, this bride and groom, in their generosity, even went so far as to invite the son's friends.

They wanted to celebrate. They wanted to celebrate their love for one another, their love for God, and most of all, God's love for them. This is why they went so far to invite even the son's friends. Certainly they knew the mother, probably they knew the son, but the son's friends were fairly recent acquaintances. The son had only been with these men for a very short time, and indeed they were a rough and tumble sort of men. That didn't matter, though, to this bride and groom. Filled with joy and ecstasy, they wanted to share it with the ones they loved and more. So, they invited the son's friends.

However, it seems this young couple was rather poor. They made do with what was available and provided as much for the feast as they could, but it wasn't enough. Before the feast was over, they began to run out of wine. Now, as any lover of the Creator can tell you, it is a tragic occasion to run out of wine at a feast. In a purely material way, it can be like running out of the life of the party. Wine expresses the goodness and fruitfulness of creation. It fills man's heart with mirth, and when drunk appropriately, it leads him to celebrate the goodness of the material world. Running out of wine, then, would have been embarrassing because it would have been an indication that the poverty of this world, the suffering of this world, can overcome the goodness of this world.

Indeed, if this crisis of celebration had been left up to purely natural circumstances, the poverty of matter would have overcome the goodness of matter. But this wasn't the case. No, there were other forces at play at this feast, forces that would not let the play cease on account of poverty. These forces, the widow and her son, would not let the poverty of this world, born of sin, prevail. In their generosity, in their eagerness to affirm the goodness of all that they shared, the bride and groom had welcomed into their lives the very remedy for their suffering. In their love of Love, Love had come to them.

"When the wine failed, the mother of Jesus said to him, 'They have no wine.' And Jesus said to her, 'O woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come.' His mother said to the servants, 'Do whatever he tells you.' Now six stone jars were standing there, for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, 'Fill the jars with water.' And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, 'Now draw some out, and take it to the steward of the feast.' So they took it. When the steward of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew) the steward of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, 'Every man serves the good wine first; and when men have drunk freely, then the poor wine; but you have kept the good wine until now." John 2: 3-10

The servants knew where the wine had come from, though the steward did not. They had seen the "water recognize its creator and blush" as the poet has put it. And, we can imagine, the couple eventually knew as well. They may or may not have known then that Jesus had turned water into wine, but they certainly would have known that God had provided wine. Through servants doing whatever Jesus told them, the eagerness of the young poor couple to celebrate God's gift of marriage was rewarded with "good wine."

If, then, we are called to live in the world but not be of it, we too must emulate all the virtues of the wedding feast of Cana. We must live with an almost rash eagerness to celebrate all that is good. We must live with an overly generous heart even in poverty. We must give out of our love for Love, and in so doing Love will come to us and make up for our shortcomings. We must "do whatever He tells us", so that the normal water of everyday life might not be just for purification, but also for transformation in Joy. In short, we must become like those at the wedding feast of Cana so that the feast might go on - into all eternity.