1.- Jesus is present in a wedding at Galilee’s Cana. Like we can assume, the wedding is celebrated according to practices and rites. In the Jewish world wedding was a familiar and private matter. It is not celebrated in the synagogue, but at home. Nevertheless, like everything in Israel, has a religious dimension. Celebration includes prayer and blessing. Anyhow, the wedding had something special. Between the guests, familiars and friends is Jesus mother. And Jesus and his disciples were invited too. Jesus is not alone; he is with his disciples, as a group, as a community.
2.- And, when all the wine provided for the celebration had been served, and they had run out of wine, the mother of Jesus said to him: They have no wine (Jn 2, 3). Wine is a feast symbol (Is 25,6), of merriment (Sal 104,15), of love. The fiancée says in the Song of Songs: Your love is more delicious than wine (1,2); and also: I would give you wine with spice (8,2). Besides, old wine is a Law symbol and the new wine, Gospel symbol (Lk 5,39; see Jn 15,1; Is 5,1.4; Jr 2,21). It is said in the Scriptures: As a wine I put out graceful shoots and my blossoms are riches and glory (Sir 24,17; see Jn 1,17). Be what it be, in that wedding something important was missing. They had run out of wine. What could it mean then? What can it mean now?.
3.- Woman, your thoughts are not mine! Jesus answer is normally used to deny a request that is judged inopportune. Reason is this: My hour has not yet come. The novelty brought by Jesus has its timing, that he does not want to advance. Nevertheless, his mother follows on and says to the servants: Do whatever he tells you. Jesus can solve the problem, but it is fundamental that the servants follow any indication he gives.
4.- Nearby were six stone water jars meant for the ritual washing as practiced by the Jews, that could hold twenty or thirty gallons each (Jn 2,6). The jars are, like the old tradition, immovable: stone made (see Ezk 36,26) and with many litters of capacity. Its finality: Jews purification. We again find ourselves with a symbol. The purification is something that dominates over ancient Law. The continuous need of purification comes from the impurity and indignity created by the Law itself. This obsession (sickly) with human indignity explains the central position assumed by the jars in the wedding’s feast. And, besides, the jars are empty. The pompous ritual, ordered by the Law, is empty, does not purify, does not serve to unite the man with God.
5.- Such obsession is sometimes found in the practice of the confession before the marriage. In past time it was incredible. So, by instance, the twelfth condition placed on the Indians by Franciscan Alonso of Molina before they married, was to confess (really, to receive absolution, “just in case”). “So, you, who want to marry now, if by any chance some or you are excommunicated, have the need to be absolved first. And, so, fall on your knees and say twice the Our Father prayer while I absolve you” The new Marriage Ritual (1990) recommends to the fiancés to receive the Penitence sacrament during their preparation. (n.18).
6.- Jesus said to the servants: “Feel the jars with water”: And they filled them to the brim. Commanding to fill the jars Jesus indicates that he offers the true purification, but he makes it in other way, not with external water that, like the Law remains out of the man, but with wine, that penetrates in the man’s interior. “Now draw some out and take it to the steward”. Really, this man had some responsibility in the running out of wine. Surprised by the high quality of the new wine and not knowing its origin, he addresses the bridegroom and tells him: “Everyone serves the best wine first and when people have drunk enough, he serves that which is ordinary; instead you have kept the best wine until the end” (Jn 2, 10). The steward recognizes that now the wine is good, but does not relate it to Jesus presence; he thinks that the wine comes from the husband cellar and he does not understand why he had not taken it out before.
7.- The disciples perceive the signal, the first made by Jesus: The miraculous sign was the first, and Jesus performed it at Cana in Galilee. In this way he let his Glory appear and his disciples believed in him. (Jn 2,11). The sign creates community: his disciples saw his glory and they believed in him. These words recall very much those: And the word was made flesh; he had his tent pitched among us and we have seen his Glory (Jn 1,14). In this aspect, the narration should not be taken by what it looks at first sight. Its true sense is deeper. We can celebrate a wedding with old wine, which perhaps is scarce and that runs out before the end of the banquet; we can see ourselves sent to the purification jars, that perhaps they are empty and it is necessary to fill them with water; finally, we can see water transformation into wine, the purification turned into the Gospel’s feast. The narration looks like a parable in action, sign and manifestation of Jesus glory.
8.- This first signal announces the substitution of the obsolete institutions, which become incompatible with the Gospel. When the Pharisees and the scribes pursue him because his disciples do not fast, Jesus tells them: You cannot make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them. Yet the bridegroom will be taken from them and they will fast in those days (Lk 5, 34-35). The Gospel is a wedding banquet and it does not understand about marplots. It is a new dress, which cannot be used to mend the old. It is a new wine that bursts the old skin. And he also told them: Nobody tears a piece from a new coat to put it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new coat and the piece taken from the new will not match the old. No one puts new wine into old wineskins; if he does, the new wine will burst the skins will be destroyed as well. But the new wine must be put into fresh skins. (5, 36-38). What happens is that the new wine offered by Jesus does not like to those used to the ancient wine of the Law. They prefer the ancient, it is older, it has more bed.
9.- From the Gospel novelty, first Christians separate from the Jews old practices. The author of the Letter to Diogneto, in the middle of II century, says: “I do not believe that you have any need of being informed upon their scruple on the food, their superstition on the saturdays, their proud on circumcision, their simulation on fasts and new moons, things all of them ridicule and unworthy of any consideration…. And to be in continuous prying of the stars and the moon in months and days of observations, distributing God’s dispositions and the changes in stations according to their own impulses, some for feasts and others for grief, who will not have it like proof of nonsense before that of religion?” (4,1-6).
10.- As far as marriage is concerned, the first Christians marry like everybody, but “on the Lord” (1Co 7,39), they take newborn life and do not adulterate: “They marry like everybody; they conceive children like everybody, but they do not expose to those born. They share table, but not bed” (To Diogneto 5,6-7). Tertulian (about 160-220) proclaims the grace to marry in the Lord: “How will we be able to exalt so great happiness that such a married couple has; a couple united by the Church, confirmed by oblation, marked by the blessing, announced by the angels and ratified by the Father?”. (Ad uxorem II 8,6.7.9)
11.- Saint John’s first chapters (2,1- 4,42) contain four different narrations (water conversion into wine, temple purification, Jesus meeting with Nicodemo and with the Samaritan), about a common theme, which could be expressed with Saint Paul’s words: The old things have passed away; a new world has come (2 Co 5,17). The Gospel’s new wine is announced, a new temple, a new birth, the live water and the new worship in spirit and truth. Old temple substitution by a new one is a fact. And borne (and bears) a price (Jn 2,21). It is necessary to opt.