Hearing then of the failure of the wine, our Lady left the quarters of the house which according to Oriental custom were generally reserved for the women, to find her Divine Son. Without hesitation she Said to Him simply: "They have no wine." The Blessed Virgin felt that it would be enough for her to point out the pressing need for a remedy to be found. Of this she had no doubt whatsoever—so the sequel proves—in her mind. But our Lord answered with words that at least to us in the West, when translated into English are liable to be gravely misunderstood by those who have departed from the tradition and feeling of the Church.
In the Protestant versions of the Bible, these words have been translated " Woman, what have I to do with thee ?" It is not too much to say that the shock conveyed by listening in church to this rendering of the answer of Christ to His Mother-without comment or explanation of any kind—has been the source of pain, wonderment and dismay to many generations of children brought up in the Church of England, and I can hardly doubt, also to the children of Nonconformity. I can answer for the effect it produced upon myself in childhood. I used to wince as I heard the words. They seemed so strange, so harsh, so rude, so unnecessary, so utterly out of keeping with the gentleness and love of Christ and with the respect which undoubtedly He owed His Mother—so foreign not only to His Nature, but also to the scene—for even a child could not fail to notice that Mary asked a favour out of the kindness of her heart, and that her Son immediately complied with her request. As a matter of fact this translation, whatever may be said for it on purely linguistic grounds, conveys—as one need not point out to Catholics—an entirely false impression of what was in the Heart of Christ, as well as of the meaning which was conveyed by the actual words He spoke. It is therefore not only an offence, as it stands, against the reverence we owe to the Divine Person of our Lord, but also against Truth. For it in no way represents reality. This I propose to demonstrate.