"Wedding at Cana"
This sculpture group is at the entrance of the Spiritual Life Center in Wichita, Kansas. I saw this marvelous display of sculptures when I led the Diocese of Dodge City, Kansas, priest retreat there a few years ago.
This sculpture group is at the entrance of the Spiritual Life Center in Wichita, Kansas. I saw this marvelous display of sculptures when I led the Diocese of Dodge City, Kansas, priest retreat there a few years ago.
It
was at Cana in Galilee that Jesus
began the signs that revealed his glory.
John
2:11
Jesus
came to this world to teach us, by performing a series of "signs" or delivering "messages" about what heaven is going to be like! There will be many more as we follow his life this
liturgical year, but today we read about the first of those "signs"
or "messages."
Now,
you would think the first "sign" or "message" that he would want
to deliver, right out of the gate, would be something more practical, like healing the physically, emotionally or spiritually
sick. There were certainly plenty of them to go around! You would think that
his first "sign" would be something practical like feeding those who were hungry. There were certainly plenty of them to
go around! Instead of multiplying loaves
of bread to feed the hungry first or curing a few hundred lepers first or even
healing a bunch of mentally disturbed people first, he went to a wedding reception and delivered a truck load of wine - somewhere between 120-180
gallons, in fact! What kind of "sign" or "message" is
that?
If
you line up the details of this reading, surely Jesus wanted to make a
statement about abundance. His first "sign" or
"message" seems to say that, in the kingdom of heaven, there will be plenty. In a culture where people routinely lived on
the edge of starvation and want, for Jesus to make this wedding reception event his first
"sign" or "message" was quite powerful. A wedding is about fertility, new life,
continuation, happiness and possibility.
Every
detail symbolizes plenty and abundance. Not only were the bride and groom's family
there, along with their relatives and neighbors, but also Jesus, his disciples
and even his mother! Not only were the
water jars now full of wine, we are told they were full to the brim! This wedding was not a
single day affair. Jewish weddings went on for a week, so this 120 -180 gallon
infusion of extra wine toward the end of the week, didn't even count what the
family had purchased in the first place and had already been consumed! Not only was this new wine added to what was
already supplied, this new wine was actually much better than what was served
first, unlike most weddings when they pulled out the cheap stuff after people
were pretty well two-sheets to the wind and wouldn't know any better!
This
multiplication of wine was the first "sign" or "message"
that Jesus performed to teach us about the kingdom that God has in store for
us. The rabbis at the time of Jesus had a saying, "Without wine, there is
no joy." So this "sign" or "message" wasn't as much
about a wedding or wine as it was a "sign" or "message"
about the joy that awaits us in the kingdom of God. As Jesus said, "I have
come to bring you life - life to the full - life full to the brim - a joy that is
not stingily divvied out in thimbles, but "pressed down. shaken together
and poured into our laps." Saint
Paul talked about it this way, "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has
it even dawned on human beings the great things God has in store for those who
love him."
Jesus
did not teach, as some assume, that this kingdom awaits us in the afterlife.
Jesus taught us that we are already in his kingdom. He wants us to start
tasting it now, even though it will not come to its fullness until we enter
heaven. Think about it! We are partially
in heaven already! All we have to do is have the eyes to see it! Jesus said as much before he performed this first "sign" or
"message." In fact, these were
the first words out of his mouth when he began his public ministry! "Metanoiete! Change the way you see so
that you see that the kingdom of God is at hand, right there in front of you!! Indeed,
it is within you!
The
kingdom is already here? To that Jesus said, "Yes it is! If you have the
right eyes you can see that it has already begun! It is subtle, like yeast working in a
batch of dough, but it is here! The "signs" that I perform - healing
the sick, feeding the hungry and releasing those who are bound up - are
"signs" that the kingdom is building. The "signs" that my
followers, as they spread around the world in the years to come, will perform
will be "even greater" because there will be millions of my followers
"healing the sick, feeding the hungry and releasing those bound
up." Then someday, in the great
by-and-by, there will be no sickness, no hunger and no imprisonment of any
kind!
One of the
"signs" of the kingdom today is the work of (1) Catholic Relief Services,
carrying on the ministry of Jesus, delivering medicine, food and aid to
desperate places. It should make us all proud that one of the most respected,
most efficient and most trusted relief agency is Catholic Relief
Services. (2) Another “sign” is the daily feeding of street people
downstairs, something that has been going on in this place for over 150 years! (3) Still another
smaller “sign” is my own little “Catholic Second Wind Guild” Caribbean charity
fund and my personal volunteering down in the poor, small country of St.
Vincent and the Grenadines. Through the donations and volunteering of
disciples like us, the kingdom of God is shown forth, and will be shown forth,
until there is no need for it when the kingdom comes to perfection in the world
to come! Then on that day, there will be no earthquakes, no disease,
no hunger, no thirst and no crying! On that day, when our lives will be
"filled to the brim," there will be plenty for everybody! Until
then, let's do what we can to help the suffering experience a little taste of
heaven, right now!
