We might envy the abundance of miracles in the days of Sacred Scripture but we too have our abundance. A young father says to me that he had seen “the miracle” of his own son being born. Daily in summer especially, I see “the miracle” of a new day being born, as the sun rises out of Lake Michigan, splashing its glory over a sheet of glass. A guy sitting on the hood of his car exclaims as I pass by: "This is incredible!" Under the picture of a magnificent rose, there’s a caption that reads, ” For those who love there are many miracles.”
Thomas Aquinas called
these "miracles of the second
order.” By "miracles of the first
order," he meant the truly "miraculous miracles," i.e. the ones
that defy the laws of nature. Unlike the first, these are not easy to believe. Even among these, some are
more difficult to believe than others. For example, there are the rather "raw materialistic" miracles,
like the miracle of the loaves and fishes which multiplied matter: five
loaves and two fishes multiplied into food enough to feed five thousand hungry
people. Or this miracle worked at
Cana, which transformed matter: the matter of 150 gallons of water transformed
into the matter of 150 gallons of wine, simply to help out a celebrating crowd
that was running out of spirits. (We get
150 gallons because the six traditional water jugs or earthen vessels,
standing in a row at Cana, each held about fifteen to twenty-five gallons.
That's gives us 150 gallons of water turned wine, and there’s a lot of celebration in 150 gallons of wine.)
John, the evangelist,
calls the water-to-wine miracle "the first of Jesus' signs" (Jn
2:11). A sign of what? Traditionally
Cana has always been a sign of the
intercessory power of Mary who pleads
before her son: ”They have no wine” (Jn 2:3).
For some Cana is a sign of Jesus’ social sensitivity toward an
embarrassed bridegroom whose wedding
party is running out of wine, or sign
of the dignity of marriage blessed by
the presence of Christ, or simply a
sign of the human side of Christ joining in on human joy and celebration.
Since this is the gospel
of St. John, there is perhaps also some
deeper mystical meaning flowing in the waters of Cana -- a
meaning that one goes hunting for, or better yet, goes fishing for in those water jugs standing in
a row at the wedding feast.
For years I have had a friend who is a very gifted woman with a kind of mystic
knowledge of the gospel, and that is
far superior to the merely intellectual
knowledge of the theologians. Mystic that she is, she’s good at hunting or
fishing for the deeper meanings. By means of many letters through the years
(all of which I have saved) she has
shared her mystic knowledge with me, and I in turn have already shared some of it with you. In one letter dated January 24, 1980, this great hunter of
deeper meaning writes:
“Those
150 gallons of water which Jesus changed into wine were tears! It's a nugget I
stumbled upon, on one of my lonely hunts. And so, you see, if we all eat, drink
and are merry now, if we all laugh
now, there won't be any water for Jesus to change into Wine. And that means
that tomorrow we all shall cry and die."
Then alluding
perhaps to the tragic dimension of her own life in Estonia during WW II (I’m
not quite sure) she continues: "Some of us, then, it seems are called upon
to weep now and fill the those
earthen vessels standing in a row at Cana. And so I weep because, don't forget,
there are 150 gallons to be filled, to the rim!" (How do you like that for
hunting?)
Well,
like her we too go hunting, we go fishing for the deeper meaning flowing in
those earthen water jugs standing in a row at the wedding feast. We too go searching for a nugget in Cana of Galilee,
and our nugget is this:
//Cana
is about the wine that always runs out on us, in our human and earthly lives.
It runs out on us every time the melancholy of autumn puts an end to the warm
delights of summer. //The wine runs on us out every time dusk falls upon our
Christmas day or the Christmas season with all its toys and things, or when
dusk falls upon any other day which we waited and waited for, and it came and
went. //The wine runs out every time we
lose interest in the expensive gadgets
we couldn't wait to get our hands on but have now tossed aside. //Cana is about
the wine that we feel running out on us, as we let go of our children
who leave home (as children are supposed to) or as we bid painful
farewells to cherished friends who move away or die. //Cana is about the wine
we feel running out on us as the years fall off the calendar like autumn
leaves, and the "un-golden" years start taking over our aging bodies,
minds, and spirits.
//Yes,
Cana is especially about the wine that runs out on the marriage feast -- wine that runs out even for the most blessed
of marriages, even for those marriages
that are forged in Cana and touched by the presence of Christ. This is the case
supreme when two loving human beings who have become one down through the years
must now tear themselves apart from each other and separate in death.// Cana is
about the sun that sets or the Shadow that falls upon all human joy and
celebration. The brighter the human joy and celebration, the darker and more
painful is the Shadow.
Of course, when we are
young the wine is never going to run out on us; it's just going to keep flowing
on and on and on. When we're young
we're never bothered by the Shadow or the setting sun. But when the years start stacking up on us,
it's a different picture. Carl Jung, the father of modern psychology, made the
interesting observation that no one over forty ever came into his office with a
problem that wasn't somehow rooted in the perception that the wine was
beginning to run out, and that the end was beginning to draw near.
We are still hunting here in Cana of Galilee, and as yet we haven't found the nugget. After all, a nugget carries gold, and there is nothing golden about running out of wine. Nothing golden about the Shadow that falls upon all human joy and celebration. Nothing golden about the “golden years.” Well, here is a nugget to unearth at Cana, and it has the same mystic depth as does that 150 gallons of tears:
We
are all earthen vessels standing in a row,
sooner
or later filled with a feeling of emptiness,
and
waiting to be filled with water and a miracle.
We
are all earthen vessels standing in a row,
waiting
to be filled not with "more of the same":
not
with more of the same cheap wines
or
with the wines that keep running out on us,
but
rather with the choice wines of Isaiah (25: 6):
the
Bordeaux's and Beaujolais' and Sauvignon's;
wines
that don't run out on us
but
keep eternally flowing,
like
"the river of life
that
rises from the throne of God
and
the Lamb, and flows crystal-clear
down
through the middle of the new Jerusalem"
(Rv
22:1-2).
Cana’s
nugget: we are all earthen vessels
standing in a row,
hoping
against hope,
believing
despite the appearances of things,
believing
that the best wine is being saved for last.
“The best wine is being
saved for last.” That's a divine promise. Either we basically believe it
or we don't. If we don't, then we
simply get on with our lives,
determined, Shadow or no Shadow, setting sun or no setting sun, to give
ourselves with full heart to all the human and earthly joys along the way, and
to exploit them for the little perfection they do have and for their brief
moment. That makes sense. Because if
the best isn't being saved for last, then what we see is all there is, and it
is all we get, and we might as well enjoy it while we can.
But if for some
mysterious reason (for faith is mysterious) we do believe the divine promise
that “the best is yet to be,” then we
too give ourselves with full heart to all the human joys and celebrations along
the way, but with this difference:
Without faith, they all end up
as miscarriages or cheats, either because they always fall short or
because, like the wine at Cana, they always run out on
us. But with faith, human joys and celebrations, despite their
imperfection, do not turn out to be
miscarriages or cheats but rather foretastes
and samplings of "the best that’s yet to be." With faith,
we can, as it were, both drink our wine and have it.
The story goes that a
very ancient lady once told her pastor that when she dies she wants to be
buried with a fork in her hand. "With a fork in your hand!," he
exclaimed. Still very sharp she explained herself: "You see, I came from a
big family. The evening meal was always
a very scheduled and even a somewhat dignified event. When it was finished,
we’d help our mother gather the dishes.
But every now and then, she’d
say , `You may keep your fork.' Oh how sweet those words were! Sweet as
the dessert that followed! She had saved the best for last!” In the gospel today, the chief steward says
to the bridegroom: "You've saved the best till last!" In his poem Cana,
Thomas Merton wrote: "What wonderful wine those humble water jugs
foretell!” Our Christian faith tells the believing child in us, “You may keep your fork,” or rather:
”You
may keep your glass”
for
the best wine has been saved
for
last.