The Luminous Mysteries: The Wedding Feast at Cana
...seeking life in the Holy Spirit during Lent
Standard opening to each mystery [modified]: This series offers brief meditations on each of the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary. The third Luminous Mystery is about the “Coming of the Kingdom and Call to Conversion” which is central to the Lenten season of penance and seeking the Kingdom of God. Penance is not an end in itself, nor are the sufferings of Lent. The end and goal of Lent and its penances is deeper interior union with Christ through love of Jesus and desire to partake of his saving mysteries. The holiness that Lent offers us is a renewed and deeper union with Christ, the Philanthropos, the lover of every human. We must come to perceive God’s love in Christ (cf. John 3:16).
These brief meditations will look at each of the Luminous Mysteries in terms of their theological significance and their offering of the Kingdom—a share in God’s own divinity and light as “partakers of the Holy Spirit” (Heb 6:4). It is by desiring the heavenly goods of the Kingdom which these mysteries offer to us (cf. Heb 6:4-5) that we become more converted to Christ, our source of holiness. Desire and love follow upon knowledge. A person does not desire and love what he does not know. Love follows recognition of the good being offered to us. In these mysteries, we try to recognize Christ seeking us out and wanting to share his life and divinity in our souls.
These meditations will follow the key mystical teaching of Saint Catherine of Siena: to grow in holiness, then our desire for God must increase without limit (cf. The Dialogue, Ch. 91-92). We must recognize Jesus more and more as our true good. The Gospel must be presented. It is by praying these mysteries in union with Mary, “now and at the hour of our death,” that Our Loving Mother accompanies us with the grace of the Holy Spirit in her maternal care of every member of Christ’s mystical body. She is Mother of the Church. In the Rosary, we join with her in contemplating Jesus Christ our savior and the goods he wants us to possess: the infinite good of God himself in us (cf. Col 1:27) and “making us partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).
Theological Significance of the Wedding Feast at Cana for Human Needs
It’s tempting to focus an exegesis on the place of this narrative in the structure of John’s Gospel; show all the connections between this Wedding Feast and the Wedding Feast of the Lamb in the Book of Revelation. Maybe demonstrate this mystery’s portrayal of the Seventh Day of the New Creation? Afterall, John’s Gospel opens with “In the beginning” and moves through multiple “the next days” and then adds “on the third day” to the preceding four days. Thus, John’s Gospel has seven new days of creation which culminate in the Wedding Feast. Maybe focus its significance on the institution of the Eucharist? All of these are tempting and potentially fruitful avenues. But, where can we find its spiritual significance that evokes greater desire for Jesus as our truest Good?
For theological insights when praying the Rosary, it seems the right avenue to explore is where Jesus shows his power over creation and what God always wanted to do for us as his creatures. God actually created humans only so that we could be divinized (or deified) and raised into the communion of love in the most holy Trinity. God made us with human freedom so that we could use our freedom to hold more firmly onto his Divine Will and so be divinized in the gift of the Holy Spirit.
When the Blessed and Ever-Virgin Mary approached Jesus and intervened for the soon-to-be-embarrassed wedding hosts, Jesus didn’t reply, “Just bring me some empty containers.” Astute observers often note, Jesus asked that the stone jars should be filled with water before giving what humans requested. He wants humans to be his co-workers and not just spectators. Part of this means he doesn’t do for us what we can do for ourselves, and so we don’t come totally empty-handed as poor as we may be. Jesus wants us to be his cooperators with him as he raises us to become his friends through a joint work and effort. We take his yoke upon us for the kingdom (cf. Mt 11:29), tied to him to complete the work.
It was inappropriate to bring him empty containers and expect him to do everything. Even when he wanted to feed thousands at the miracle of the loaves and fishes, he made the crowds give something for him to work with, a few loaves and a few fishes. Jesus multiplies our works, he doesn’t do everything for us. Jesus transforms our lives, he doesn’t live them for us even though he accompanies us. The words of Saint Augustine’s commentaries on the Psalms come to mind: “God created you without your cooperation, but he will not save you without your cooperation.” Jesus wanted to show how God works with our nature and humanity to transform our lives.
Grace builds upon and works through human nature to perfect it and elevate it. Grace does not override us; it actually develops our freedom to work rightly. Grace works within our freedom and helps us desire rightly the things of heaven. “Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of man will give to you” (Jn 6:27). Grace does not come to us so that we do not have to work or provide anything, but rather so that we can do the very things that God calls us to do and become more fully God’s image. “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father” (Jn 14:12).
[ “Wedding at Cana,” in Fra Angelico’s Armadio degli Argenti, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons]
The turning of water into wine at Cana is the sign which foretells the human soul receiving the Holy Spirit, and God and man becoming one in participant transformation. As water was transformed into wine, so by baptism the soul is clothed in God’s light and life: “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Gal 3:27). The miracle at the Wedding Feast is the sign by which we understand what is happening in our Baptisms and continuously in our souls as they surrender to Christ. Baptism is when our “garments of skins” (Gen 3:21 RSV; i.e. our fallen condition) become garments of light (grace in our souls) and we are clothed in Christ (cf. 2 Cor 5:4). Old wine skins are replaced with new wine skins and we are dressed for the Wedding Feast.
In Baptism, oaths are exchanged and we swear ourselves to God in the “I dos” of the ceremony. “Do you reject Satan?” I do. “Do you believe in God?” I do. God “espouses” the soul and shares his life within humans: “For I betrothed you to Christ to present you as a pure bride to her one husband” (2 Cor 11:2). Jesus is the one who accomplishes this when we invite him into our lives and wedding feasts and want him in the midst of us. We must give our wills to God and be consecrated to God through Baptism which is where we espouse God and become one with God; our lives in His and His life in us. Humans provide the water to be poured out, but in the process of this bathing and pouring, God turns the water into the new wine being drunken in freely by our souls: the life of the Holy Spirit
Thirsting for New Wine
In meditating on the mystery of the Wedding Feast at Cana – in union with the heart of Mary – through ten “Hail Mary’s” [a decade], what should we be contemplating? Jesus’ whole mission is to bring us to drink of the new wine, the Holy Spirit. As John the Baptist said about Jesus, “This is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.”
Jesus was sent by the Father so that he could enter our human lives and so create from his life, death, and resurrection the mystical body into which he could pour the Holy Spirit. Jesus’ life inside of us comes through faith which the Holy Spirit inspires and this faith becomes the new wine skins which implore and receive the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. “Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; if it is, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved” (Mt 9:17).
How do the wineskins of faith in Christ get filled with new wine? We must cooperate and do our part to receive and continue the transformation which Christ promises. We bring ourselves to the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, the Divine Liturgy or Mass. At the liturgy, earthly wine is transformed into new wine, the wine of the New Covenant. At the words of Christ’s institution: “This is my blood,” the Holy Spirit transforms the wine into the blood of Christ which is inside Christ’s resurrected and glorified body, while leaving intact “the accidents” or qualities of wine. Transubstantiation takes place without disgust to the recipient and without cannibalism on the side of the receiver. The characteristics or qualities [ the accidents] of wine remain in order to remind us to understand the mystery mystically rather than carnally: “it is the Spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail” (Jn 6:63)
In Christ’s resurrected and glorified state, Christ’s blood is inseparable from the life of the Holy Spirit and the blood never leaves Christ’s body in heaven while being joined to earth in transubstantiation. As the last meditation on Christ’s Baptism showed, this is why Saint Paul called Jesus “a life-giving Spirit” (1 Cor 15:45). We are not drinking blood in the sense that blood has left Jesus’ body, so much as we are being united with Christ mystically and intimately where Christ is in heaven. Jesus has become “a life-giving Spirit.” We are brought into him and made more fully members of his body through participation in the Sacrament, the mysterium fidei. The transubstantiation of the bread and wine is for our transformation into the Body of Christ.
In the sign of new wine at the liturgies, the very life of Jesus who can die no more – because he has become an “indestructible life” (Heb 7:16) – is being shared with us on earth without it leaving Christ in heaven. Rather the New Jerusalem is joined to earth so that we are momentarily entering into heaven spiritually and mystically (cf. Heb 10:19-22;12:22-24) in the Great Sacrament which builds us into Christ. This is why Christ told his followers they would not understand the mystery until after his Ascension: “What if you were to see the Son of man ascending to where he was before?” (Jn 6:62).
The Bride Groom at the Wedding Feast of the Divine Liturgy chastely shares his life with us. The Bride Groom is sharing his life with us as the Lamb of God (cf. Rev 21:22) which John the Baptist pointed to at the start of Jesus’ public ministry and signs. The faithful are baptized in order to have the new wine poured into them and become the new wine skins; we are the mystical body of Christ. “No man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the Church, because we are members of his body” (Eph 5:29-30).
The Beatitudes call us to Holy Communion
At the Wedding Feast of Cana, it is announced that the new wine which Jesus miraculously gave has changed the usual order: “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” (Jn 2:10). Jesus is the “Last Adam” (1 Cor 15:45) and the first Adam was a foreshadowing. Jesus has saved the best wine until now for all of humanity to drink freely and receive his Spirt and righteousness: “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed…walk in the way of insight” (Wisdom 9:5-6).
In giving us the ultimate wisdom in the Sermon on the Mount, it is in the fourth Beatitude that the Son of God teaches: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (Mt 5:6). Having experienced conversion to Christ, having been baptized, we must seek to “grow into Christ in every way” (Ephesians 4:15). So, “Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of man will give to you” (Jn 6:27). As Saint Peter teaches, “Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue” (2 Pet 1:5), the virtue that comes from sharing in Christ’s life.
Thirst for righteousness which is God’s righteousness in you. Consider the sign and mystery at Cana. Meditate upon Christ seeking you out and in his first public sign he shows that he gives the new wine. Consider its implications when the night before he died, at the Last Supper he left access for everyone to the new wine, his life. Renew your conversion through the Sacrament of Penance so that you can drink of the new wine with a pure conscience (cf. 1 Cor 11:28-29). Be moved to desire his life within you when you drink of the cup of salvation. As Saint Bonaventure taught, consume him with your desire and not only your lips that sip the new wine. Hunger and thirst for his righteousness. Want more than anything that the Holy Spirit abide in you more.
Mother Mary, you implored Jesus to give us wine to drink. Both Jesus and you knew it was about the true wine he would institute at the Last Supper. Please pray for me to desire more the cup of salvation, the new covenant and be filled like you, full of grace.
[Next Installment in about 3 weeks: The Coming of the Kingdom and Call to Conversion]
With testimonials from several noted authors, see Dr. Tsakanikas’ revised and newly published book on Amazon which the above article complemented [click below]:
A Catechesis on Deification, Transfiguration, and the Luminous Mysteries