Based on the Gospel of John 2:1-11
A wedding. No wine. The first miracle. Weddings are important times in people’s lives and special to Jesus. When two people get married, they share their love with one another and plan their life together – to pray, to work, perhaps to have children and raise a family, and to spend the rest of their lives with each other.
In this Sunday’s Gospel, we hear Jesus, his mother Mary, and some of his disciples are at a wedding celebration in Cana, a little village down the road from Nazareth. Guests are having a good time enjoying the music, dancing and drinking of wine. A while later, Mary hears the bride and groom have run out of wine to serve the guests. How embarrassed they must feel. What can they do?
Mary understands and tells Jesus, “They have no wine.” Jesus says it isn’t time yet to begin performing miracles. But Mary knows Jesus will help the couple if she asks. Mary says to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
Every Jewish household stores six jars of water for ceremonial washings. Each jar holds 20 to 30 gallons. Jesus tells the servants to fill the jars with water. With a prayer, Jesus does something totally awesome: he turns the water into wine – his first miracle. Now the wedding celebration can continue.
Only Mary, Jesus’ disciples, and the servants saw that ordinary water was changed into wine. They saw Jesus’ power as the Son of God. Then and there, Jesus’ active, public ministry began. The miracle helped the disciples to believe in Jesus. Today, Jesus helps us. Every time the bread and wine are consecrated and become the Body and Blood of Jesus at each eucharistic feast – the Mass – Jesus is there helping our faith in him to grow ever stronger.
This Gospel teaches us that Mary is not only Jesus’ mother but our mother too.
Jesus changed water into wine at his mother’s request to show us how much he loves her and how powerful her prayers are. Mary will always ask Jesus to help us when we pray to her.
In 2002, Pope John Paul II named five new mysteries of the rosary called the luminous mysteries, which are five events in the public life of Jesus. The marriage feast at Cana is the second luminous mystery. Pray the rosary devoutly this week, meditating on the luminous mysteries. “To Jesus through Mary!”
