THE
marriage feast of Cana, at which we are now arrived, shows us our
Blessed Lady in a more prominent position than the former incidents
of the Public Life. 1 In those she is withdrawn from the sight, and
is cooperating with our Lord, most efficaciously indeed, but only by
the way of prayer and interior activity. This kind of action of hers
is that which is to be the general rule during the Public Life. But
there are to be exceptions to this general rule, occasions on which
she comes forward openly to a certain extent, as if she had a special
office to discharge to our Lord, apart from the general and most
intimate interior companionship with Him which we suppose her to have
enjoyed, and apart also from that perpetual exercise of the most
powerful intercession, which is a work which she never ceases to
perform for the benefit of the Church. In this incident of the
marriage feast she is almost as prominent as in that of the
Visitation, which was the first of our Lord's great spiritual
miracles after His Incarnation, as this marriage feast is the
occasion of His first great material miracle. In each of these our
Blessed Lady has a part of her own to take. Although the time of
their separation had not yet been long, still very much had happened
since they parted on which our Blessed Lady would long to converse
with her Divine Son. The interval had been marked by splendid
mysteries, the Baptism and the Vision of the Blessed Trinity, the
Fasting and Temptation, and the first vocation of some of the future
Apostles. The occasion of the meeting itself was full of holy
interest to her, and the bridegroom and the bride were probably her
relatives. The Hidden Life, which had consecrated the Christian
family and all its beautiful charities, had not had room for the
blessing of any marriage, and this was to be supplied on the occasion
before us. If there were nothing more than this in the mystery of
which we are speaking, it would still be highly precious to us, as
being the one occasion in our Lord's life in which the blessing of
His presence and the consecration which it involved were secured for
the holy nuptial tie which was to be so largely enriched by Him with
sacramental grace in the Church. To all holy and religious souls such
occasions are times of much fervent prayer, for they imply an immense
need of grace for the right and holy discharge of the duties which
are then assumed. So in the large and motherly heart of our Blessed
Lady the meeting-would be one of great joy on this account also. But
it was also to be used by our Lord for a great step in the advance of
His Kingdom, and for this advance Providence had arranged to make use
of our Blessed Lady as an instrument.
We
need not relate over again what has been sufficiently commented on
elsewhere, but it is right to bring out in this place the parts of
the history which relate to our Lady more particularly. In the first
place it seems natural to assume that it was not merely out of
compassion for the slight trouble which might fall on the
newly-wedded pair or the furnishers of the entertainment, if it were
to come about that the deficiency of the wine were noticed, that she
spoke as she did speak to our Lord. No doubt the hearts of both of
them were full of the tenderest compassion and the most delicate
consideration, so that under ordinary circumstances it might have
been natural for them to exert themselves for the relief of such
persons from any embarrassment or appearance of want of provision for
their guests. But it must be remembered that our Lord had not, as far
as we know, as yet begun His course of miraculous works, and it might
seem hardly fitting that He should for the first time work a miracle
on such an apparently trivial occasion. We must suppose our Blessed
Lady to have known or divined, not only His possession of the power
which would be required for the miraculous supply of the need, but
also that it would be in accordance with His plans for the
advancement of His work in the world, to manifest His power in this
particular manner. Thus the inter position of our Blessed Lady is an
evidence of her insight into His designs for the confirmation of His
claims by means of the evidence of miracles. She must have been
thinking of this rather than of the particular needs of the wedded
pair, and she must have understood that thoughts of the same kind
were occupying His own mind. She must have seen in the occasion
before her, not only the blessing of the holy nuptial tie by the
presence of the Incarnate Son of God, but also a stage in the gradual
unfolding of the evidences for His mission into the world. But to say
this is almost to say in other words that she had an intimate and
intuitive knowledge of His intentions and wishes. She divined not
only that the time was at hand for the first manifestation of His
power, but also that it was in accordance with His will that she
should exercise the office of bring ing about that manifestation.
At
the same time, as has already been said, we may see in this
interference of hers, unsolicited and unthought of by those whom it
was meant directly to benefit, the extreme tenderness and
compassionateness of her motherly heart. It is as if she could not
bear to see those two poor souls beginning their wedded life with a
kind of failure, as if she saw in their confusion and disappointment
a sufficient motive for setting in motion the whole Divine power
which was shrined in the Sacred Humanity of her Son. It is the same
kind of compassion, as has been said, which we find in our Lord
Himself on the occasion of the hunger of the multitude who had
followed Him into the desert. Then also He had a Divine purpose of
His own, apart from their relief. There can have been nothing
unseemly in what was proposed by our Blessed Lady and acquiesced in
by our Blessed Lord. And we may encourage ourselves very much by this
thought in our prayers to Him and to her, remembering how she thought
for these people before they thought for themselves, and was willing
to make their comparatively slight necessities the subject of her
intercession with the most merciful Heart of her Son.
In
the next place, the supposition that our Lady was now acting with the
purpose of promoting the glory of God, and especially the
manifestation of the power of her Divine Son, rather than out of
simple compassion, must modify very much our view of the whole
incident. Our Lord's answer to her simple remark, "They have no
wine," seems to show that He understood her interference in the
sense which is here proposed. For His answer consists of two parts.
First He seems to acknowledge her influence, and in a certain sense
to speak as if it put some pressure on Him, while in the second part
of the answer He tells her that His time has not yet come. If this
means His time for working miracles generally, then it would appear
that the faith of Mary, as manifested in her injunction to the
servants, "Whatsoever He shall say to you, do it," caused
Him to anticipate the time of which He spoke, by beginning His series
of miracles now rather than somewhat later. In other cases, and long
after He was publicly and generally known as a worker of miracles, He
had carefully to elicit and strengthen the faith of those who sought
some wonder at His hand, but in this case He speaks as if her faith
was so strong that He could resist it no longer.
If,
on the other hand, the words before us mean that the moment for this
particular miracle had not quite arrived, they show again, when taken
in connection with the injunction He gave almost immediately, that
the prayer of His Mother had the same effect of hastening on the
moment. It is strange that any difficulty can be made as to this, as
it is only what happens whenever a grace is gained by prayer, and our
Lord, Who foresees and knows all things, arranges the prayer which
wins the grace, as well as the granting of the grace to the prayer.
In any case, the great miracle was almost immediately wrought, and it
is impossible to question the large part of our Lady in bringing it
about. It was brought about exactly in the way which was most in
harmony with the office of intercessor which we attribute to her at
this time, and throughout our Lord's Life, and afterwards. That is,
she had no part at all in working the miracle, which was the effect
of our Lord's Divine power alone. But she had the w r hole work and
glory of inducing our Blessed Lord to exert His Power in this way and
at this time, and this in the case of a miracle, in a certain sense,
of unique power, in the change of one substance into another, a
miracle which stands at the very beginning of the whole glorious
chain, and had the result of manifesting Him to the faith of His
disciples in an entirely new manner.
There
can be no doubt that every circumstance of this miracle was arranged
in a beautiful order by the Providence of God. It was arranged that
our Lord should begin His chain of miracles just at this time, when
His first disciples had joined Him. It was arranged that the miracle
itself should have a prophetic importance, inasmuch as it pre-figured
the permanent marvel of transubstantiation in the Blessed Sacrament,
the marriage feast of our Lord and the Church. It was arranged that
the words of the steward of the feast to the bridegroom should be
just what they were, so as to admit of their application to the whole
system of our Lord, Who keeps His best for last. This is all
undeniable. But it must be equally undeniable that the position of
our Blessed Lady in the miracle must have been a part of this Divine
arrangement, that she should be the moving cause of the performance
of the wonder at that time and in that way. Our Lord chose to
sanctify St. John in the womb of St. Elisabeth by means of the voice
of His own Blessed Mother, and He chose to work this opening and most
splendid miracle by means of the intercession of His Mother. She had
a part in that first sanctification of a soul by the grace of the
Redeemer, and she had a part in this first manifestation of His glory
and power, in the working of an unheard-of miracle.
St.
John tells us that He " manifested His glory, and His disciples
believed in Him," that is, the miracle was perfect in all its
parts and in all its effects. Our Lord showed thereby, not simply
that .He could change water-into wine, but that God was with Him and
in Him, and that because this was so, what He said was the Word of
God, what He taught was the truth of God, what He enjoined was the
law of God. But the disciples must have seen also in the miracle a
manifestation of the power of Mary as well as of the glory of her
Son. They must have seen more than her power, for they must have seen
how perfectly she knew Who her Son was, how perfectly she read His
Heart and divined His intentions. They must have understood that He
could have worked the miracle without her, but that He did not so
choose to work it. They must have under stood that He knew of the
failing of the wine, and yet that He waited for her to tell Him of
it, that her words to Him were a part of the ordained series of
causes in the accomplishment of the work.
Our
Lord's Sacred Heart, so full of thankfulness to the Father, and of
holy joy in seeing the revelation which was to be made through
Himself opening out in ever fresh and more glorious manifestations,
must have overflowed with gratitude and love at this beginning of
signs, as His Evangelist calls it. For now, as it were, began to flow
the ample volume of the streams of God's bounty in the dispensation
of miraculous signs, signs which were at once evidences of His
faithfulness and mercy, and representations of greater and more
lasting boons of spiritual healing and relief and magnificence. They
were at once to fasten on and ripen and strengthen the faith of His
disciples in all time, which was to be, as faith always had been, the
condition of pleasing God and the key to untold treasures and glories
of every kind. They were also to be in themselves expressions of the
most, tender mercy, shedding itself forth in material gifts and
implying spiritual favours of every kind. He was to work a certain
number Himself in every kind, and then to leave the gift behind Him
in the Church with the promise that those who believed in Him should
work even greater wonders than He had worked, because He was to go to
the Father. On the evidence of the miracles of the Apostles and on
that of the fulfilment of the prophecies, was to rest the conversion
of the world.
In
every age of the Church, thousands and thou sands of His saints were
to be allowed to use the gift, and in each single exercise thereof
there was to be the exertion of His own power, an act of love and
compassion of His own Sacred Heart. He must have rejoiced, therefore,
with an infinite joy at the opening of these floodgates of mercy, at
the blessings which they directly conveyed to the subjects whom their
power reached, but much more in their efficacy in rolling away doubts
and difficulties in the minds of those to whom they were the first
heralds of the Word of God, the harbingers of all the spiritual
graces and gifts with which it was charged. He rejoiced with an
infinite joy in the faithfulness and humility and purity of intention
and courage with which the gift was to be used by the Saints, to whom
it was to be given to use it in His Name. And surely no thought of
this kind could have been dearer to Him than that, in this opening
mystery of the dispensation of miracles, His Blessed Mother had
exercised the office so sweetly, so humbly, and yet with so perfect a
confidence and trust in Him. He was to derive immense glory from His
saints, and a great part of this was to come from the faith in which
their wonders were to be wrought, for it gave Him great honour to
have servants so powerful in the midst of their human infirmities.
But the glory that would redound to Him from His Mother was
indefinitely greater and more precious to Him than any that He could
receive from the faith of His saints to the end of time.
We
do not know that the heart of our Lady was allowed to penetrate the
future, so that the whole of the mighty series of our Lord's
miracles, whether in His lifetime or in the Church, could have been
manifest to her as a subject of gratitude and praise. But the
unlocking of the power of miracles, which had now taken place, was a
boon to the world and a glory to God which her heart and mind were
able to appreciate as no others could. She could look at the bounties
of God and our Lord in their source and fountain, without counting
out every single instance in which that fountain might flow forth.
Thus, in any case, it must have been an intense joy to her to see
this great range of manifestations of Divine condescension opened,
and to have known that it had been opened at her suggestion, made in
obedience to the guidance of the Holy Ghost. She could rejoice
intensely in the faith of the disciples, more, indeed, than in the
miracle itself. For in that faith was contained the principle and the
security of the whole of that most glorious service to God in which
their lives were to be spent. This is the first time at which their
faith is named, although there must have been much faith in their
souls already when they joined themselves to Him as their Master.
Their faith was yet to grow in firmness and clearness and in the
teaching of the Father, until it became strong enough to be made the
foundation of the Church. But the dawn had come in its full beauty,
the sun had risen in their hearts, and they would for ever look back
on that blessed feast when our Lady said, ' They have no wine,"
as the moment in their lives when they had first really known our
Lord.
1 Story of the Gospels, § 22
