Message of Cana: Dignity and meaning of Christian marriage, and much more
- January 16, 2010
Let’s look at John’s story about Cana, a town near Nazareth, Jesus and Mary’s home town. Mary is a guest at the wedding, and Jesus and his early followers have been invited too. Mary is something of a special guest, and she may have had something to do with helping arrange the reception. When she becomes aware that the hosts are running out of wine, her faith in her Son leads her to tell him of the problem. Remember, in John’s telling of the gospel story, Jesus has not yet worked any sign or miracle. Jesus even says to his mother, “My hour has not yet come.”
For one thing, in this story John shows the ordinary humanity of Jesus. And, remember, John is a great emphasizer of Jesus as Son of God. Nevertheless, we see Jesus at Cana enjoying the happy social occasion of a wedding, and acting in sympathy, kindness and understanding toward people who aren’t in the worst trouble there is, but still are acutely ashamed and embarrassed.
And the Catholic Church has always understood Jesus at Cana as a powerful sign of the value he places on Christian marriage as a sacrament and a vocation. We don’t even know the young couple’s names, but we consider them one of the most privileged couples in history, to have Jesus and Mary as guests at their wedding. And yet, as I like to point out when I preside at a Catholic wedding, every young couple who get married in the Church are more privileged than they. The couple from Cana invited Jesus to their home and he changed water into wine for them. But Jesus invites each Catholic couple into the church, the home he shares with them, and for them and their guests at Mass he changes bread and wine into his own Body and Blood, with which he nourishes them for their life together in Him.
The dignity and meaning of Christian marriage is challenged in our time, especially by people who contend that different kinds of partnering should be indistinguishable from one another, that there is nothing unique about the union of a man and a woman, and the life they share with one another and their children. Besides, we are often told, this is the 21st century, and the traditional family of husband, wife and their children is passé, going quickly out of style.
In a Sunday cartoon sometime ago Doonesbury took satiric aim at such ideas; he showed his hero watching Geraldo or some such tabloid show. The host began: “Meet Brad and Carol. They have been married for ten years. They have two happy, well-adjusted children who were not born out of wedlock. Both Brad and Carol go to church, give time to charities, love their parents, and help their kids with their homework. Neither has ever battered the other. Neither is addicted to sex, drugs, alcohol, food, violence, cigarettes, or each other. Today on Geraldo: Happily married people who are not recovering from anything!!” Then the host says: “So, Brad and Carol! What’s it like, being freaks?” Brad answers, “It’s fine. No complaints.” Carol says, “Actually it’s strengthened our marriage.”
I’m not saying Jesus doesn’t care about troubled lives or troubled relationships. He seems to care most about those, and so should we in the Catholic Church. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a Christian ideal, and it does mean that the people who strive toward it need our prayers, support and encouragement.
And the story of Cana speaks to each one of us baptized Catholics about our own vocations as Christians. Cana shows us that Jesus has the power and the desire to make the ordinary in us into the spiritually extraordinary, just as he transformed the water into wine. But we have to do as those waiters did: we have to take Mary’s advice — “Do whatever he tells you.” That is the only piece of advice Mary gives to anyone in all four gospels, and twenty centuries later it is still the best piece of spiritual advice for Christians: “Do whatever Jesus tells you.”
In today’s Gospel story St. John is not just telling us about something Jesus did many centuries ago in a town halfway around the world. It’s a story about what Jesus is always doing.
In this connection, Dr. William Barclay, the Presbyterian scholar of Scripture, told a story about a British laborer who drank away his wages at the pub every week with his friends from work. Consequently, he was behind in the rent, his wife had begun to pawn their furniture, and there was little food on the table. One day he went to a Christian temperance meeting and turned his life around. He stopped drinking. Now there was food on the table and money for the rent. His family was delighted. However, his co-workers were not; they had lost their drinking buddy. They teased him endlessly, and one day one of them asked him sarcastically “Do you really believe Jesus Christ turned water into wine?” The man answered, “I don’t know about that, but if you come over to my house I’ll show you how he turned beer into furniture!”
The message is that Jesus comes into our lives too, with the same power that could change water into wine. Here’s a promising question, not a scary one: What change do you need to make in your life that you can’t do by yourself? What is the “beer” in your life that needs to be changed into “furniture?” If you were to take Mary’s advice, and do whatever Jesus tells you, what change could he make in your life if you let him?
Archbishop George H. Niederauer delivered the homily above Jan. 16 at a Handicapables Mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral Conference Center.
From January 22, 2010 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
