In the face of the perplexities and apprehensions that today’s world may cause us, the Gospel invites us to hope.The omnipotent intercession of Mary will obtain from Her Divine Son the transformation of water – in this case, water polluted by sin – into the best wine.
Newsroom (18/01/2022 09:46 AM, Gaudium Press) The pages of the Old Testament are perfumed by the deeds of the holy women who built up the successive generations of the Chosen People. All of them in some way prefigure Our Lady and have anticipated the unsurpassable example of Mary Most Holy in the practice of the virtues.
Such were Ruth, the Moabites, the chaste Susanna and Judith, who overcame the terrible Holofernes when the rulers of Israel were already preparing to hand over the city. The same happened to Esther: though frail, she was sensitive to the pleas of her uncle Mordecai to intercede with the king to save the Israelites from extermination. She prayed, asked for strength and, at the risk of her life, obtained the king’s good graces, showing how much she loved her people.
Like all symbols, these prefigures are inferior to what they represent, but they reveal aspects of the matchless soul of the Virgin Mary. Since “God the Father gathered all the waters and named them sea; He gathered all His graces and named them Mary,“[1] any perfection in the created universe-with the exception of Jesus Christ, the God-Man-is insufficient to compare properly with the Mother of God.[2] It is in this perspective that we should analyze the Gospel of the Wedding at Cana, where the insufficiency of wine gave rise to Jesus Christ’s first miracle through Mary’s intercession.
Total trust in our Lady
There was a wedding in Cana of Galilee: the Mother of Jesus was present; Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine ran short, the Mother of Jesus said to Him: “They have no more wine” (Jn 2:1-3).
Cana was ten kilometres from Nazareth and was a more important town than Nazareth. The Mother of Jesus certainly had friendly relations with the family of one of the intending spouses, so She went to the feast. Our Lord accompanied Her, taking with Him His first disciples: John, James, Peter, Andrew, Philip, and Nathanael.
As always, the Blessed Virgin, unconcerned with Herself, paid attention to everything, eager to do good to others. Then She realized, perhaps without anyone notifying Her, the embarrassing situation: there was no more wine. Our Lady interpreted everything wisely and certainly considered that Providence had permitted the shortage of wine to give Jesus an opportunity to manifest His Divinity.
His Mother said to those who were serving: “Do whatever he tells you” (Jn 2:5).
Our Lady knew very well the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the fiery furnace of charity, generated in that sublime temple which is Her maternal cloister. “Because, as a Mother, She knew especially the Heart of her Son, She knows that She will be attended to, and She recommends Her servants to do whatever He tells them to do. And so, at Mary’s request, the hour of Christ’s miracles is exceptionally anticipated.”[3] This is the efficacy of suppliant Omnipotence.
This shows us how we must trust in Our Lady without restraint, even when we seem to be deserving of Our Lord’s rejection. It is She who will help us when, even for us, “the wine fails”. For the Mediatrix of all graces, by divine design, has absolute power of obtaining what She requests.
In His unfathomable goodness, the Redeemer promised: “Whatever you ask the Father in My name, I will do for you” (Jn 14:13). Now if this is true for us, we conceived in original sin and with so many personal miseries, how can it not be true to a very high degree for His incomparable Mother? If Jesus denied Her nothing on earth, would He do otherwise in Heaven? If He performed this stupendous miracle, although it was not yet His time, we can be sure that now His time has come, for He is in Heaven as the Eternal Priest with the Father to intercede for us (cf. Heb 4:14). He is there to attend to our requests; He remains at the mercy of Our Lady’s requests.
The pious Cardinal de la Luzerne concludes well: “On the pinnacle of glory, has She lost Her power? Would the prize of Her incomparable virtues be that of having less credit before God? Will he who on earth was submissive to Her commands reject Her prayers in Heaven?”[4] So let us be sure that, by turning to Mary, we shall be answered in every circumstance.
The best wine in history: the Reign of Mary
In the face of the perplexities and apprehensions that today’s world may cause us, this Sunday’s Gospel invites us to hope. For we know that when humanity reaches a level of moral decadence where all seems lost, the omnipotent intercession of Mary will obtain from Her Divine Son the transformation of water – in this case, water polluted by sin – into the best wine.
The spiritual misery of the world will be transformed, through the intercession of the Mother of God, into something extraordinary, that we cannot even imagine: the Reign of Mary – that is, the triumph of Her Wise and Immaculate Heart – announced by Her at Fatima. The phrase of today’s Gospel: “You have left the best wine for the end”, can well mean: “You have left, O God, your best graces for times to come”. The most excellent graces, the most outstanding benefits, the greatest Saints, the most exquisite cultures – all that could be best was reserved for this Marian era.
In that blessed age Mary will be established as Queen of Hearts, and “wonderful things will happen in this world, where the Holy Spirit, finding His beloved Spouse as it were, reproduced in souls, will come upon them abundantly, and fill them with His gifts, particularly with the gift of wisdom, to work the wonders of grace. When will come this happy time and this century of Mary, when innumerable souls, chosen and obtained from the Most High by Mary, losing themselves in the abyss of Their interior, will become living copies of Mary, to love and glorify Jesus Christ?
By the loving design of Her Divine Son, the best “wine” of history will come in the end, and it will be the “wine of Mary”!
Excerpted, with alterations, from:
CLÁ DIAS, João Scognamiglio. The unpublished on the Gospels: Commentaries on the Sunday Gospels. Città del Vaticano-São Paulo: LEV-Instituto Lumen Sapientiæ, 2012, v.6, p. 23-35.
[1] SAINT LUIS GRIGNION DE MONTFORT. Traité de la vraie dévotion à la Sainte Vierge, n. 23. In: Œuvres Complètes. Paris: Du Seuil, 1966, p. 498.
[SAINT THOMAS OF AQUINAS. Summa Theologica. I, q. 25, a. 6, ad 4.
[3] TUYA, OP, Manuel de. Commented Bible. Evangelios. Madrid: BAC, 1964, v. V, p. 1003.
[4] LA LUZERNE, César-Guillaume de. Explication des Évangiles. Paris: Mequignon Junior, 1847, v. I, p. 194.
[5] SAINT LUZERNE GRIGNION DE MONTFORT, op. cit.
Compiled by Sandra Chisholm
