49 — THE FIRST MIRACLE OF JESUS

Second Sunday after Epiphany

Presence of God. — O Jesus, today I ask You to renew in me the great miracle You once worked for the spouses of Cana.

Meditation

1 — With the cycle of Jesus’ childhood closed, the liturgy begins to speak of His public life. In the octave of Epiphany it recalled the Savior’s baptism in the waters of the Jordan, an event that marked the beginning of His apostolate, and today it speaks to us of His first miracle, destined, like the preceding ones, to manifest to the world His glory as Son of God.

“At that time there was a wedding at Cana of Galilee. The Mother of Jesus was there, and Jesus also...” so says today’s Gospel (Jn. 2, 1-11). Immediately, and in the foreground beside the Lord, we find Our Lady in her maternal function as Mediatrix of all graces; the miracle of Cana, Jesus’ first miracle, is worked precisely through her intercession, so powerful that it causes Christ’s hour to be anticipated. “My hour has not yet come,” the Savior had in fact answered His Mother. But at Jesus’ apparently negative reply, Mary is not disturbed, nor does she insist; sure of her Son and full of loving trust in Him she says to the servants: “Do whatever He tells you.” Jesus is won over by the humility, delicacy, faith, and trusting abandonment of His Mother and, to show us how powerful she is over His divine Heart, He condescends. Beside Mary’s, we must admire the faith and prompt obedience of the servants: following Mary’s counsel, they at once carry out Jesus’ orders: they fill the jars with water and then draw from them. Not a moment of doubt, not a protest, but a simple obedience, simple as that of children. Let us learn to believe, to obey, and to make use of Mary’s powerful intercession.

2 — “The water had been changed into wine.” That miracle Jesus performed at Cana, He continues to perform on our altars in a far more marvelous way: a little bread and a little wine are changed into Christ’s Body and Blood. This Body and this Blood are offered as nourishment to our souls. That is why the Communio of today’s Mass gives the Gospel passage that speaks of water changed into wine. Yes, for us too Jesus has “kept the good wine until now”: it is the wine of the Most Holy Eucharist that inebriates our souls.

But we can also think of another marvelous transformation Jesus works in our souls by means of grace: the water of our poor human nature is made participant in the divine nature, is changed into the most noble wine of Christ’s own life. Man becomes a member of Christ, an adopted child of God, a temple of the Holy Spirit. And today Our Lady teaches us in what way we can and must favor in ourselves this most precious transformation: “Do whatever Jesus tells you,” she repeats also to us as to the servants at Cana’s banquet. Mary invites us to follow and to put into practice all Jesus’ teachings and precepts, which show us the way to arrive at a total transformation in Him. With humble and docile heart, with living faith and full confidence, let us therefore entrust ourselves to Jesus through the hands of Mary.

Colloquy

How it encourages me, O Lord, to find today, beside You, Your sweetest Mother! Near Mary, under her maternal gaze, protected by her powerful intercession, everything becomes easier and simpler. O Jesus, how well You did to give us Your sweet Mother, to give us a mother also for our spiritual life! Yes, O Lord, I want to follow Mary’s precious counsel and do what You tell me, all that You will from me.

I would like to imitate the servants’ prompt and blind obedience at the banquet: to obey You thus, always, in all Your teachings, counsels, precepts; to obey You thus in the person of my superiors, even when I do not see the appropriateness of their commands, of their dispositions, even when difficult things are asked of me or things that seem absurd to me. But I would like still more to imitate the abandonment of Your Mother who, with such delicacy, entrusts to You both her desire to help the spouses and their need. She is not disturbed by Your apparent refusal, she does not insist in her request, she asks nothing, but she is sure, profoundly sure, that Your Heart, infinitely good and tender toward every misery, will provide and will provide abundantly.

O Lord, with this trust and this abandonment today I too want to present to You my poverty. Do You see it? My soul, like the jars at the banquet, is full of water, the cold and tasteless water of my misery, of my weaknesses that I cannot completely overcome; I too can say with the Psalmist, “the waters have come up to my neck” (Ps. 68, 1) and keep me submerged, almost drowned in incapacity, in powerlessness. I believe, Lord, I believe that, if You will, You can change all this water into the most precious wine of Your love, of Your grace, of Your life. You are so powerful, so merciful, that my misery, however great, does not frighten You, because before You, Infinite One, it is always little. As in Holy Mass the drops of water poured into the chalice are transformed, like the wine, into Your Blood, so, O Lord, take my misery, immerse it in Your Heart, make it disappear in You.