“this is what happened at Cana.; a miracle, a sign; just a miracle, though, like all miracles, it was meant to , & did, bring about the beginning of faith. Still it was only a miracle. Cana is a joyful story, a story prefiguring a liberation & a new life to come, fittingly symbolised by the good wine; & in all of this the mother of Jesus is brushed aside. However, John expects us to set this story alongside a second one at the end of the gospel, a story in which new wine has turned sour & we have only vinegar instead. The story of Jesus in all the gospels is the story of the failure of Jesus. He begins so promisingly. The people, especially the poor, are entranced by his message & his miracles of healing. But by the end they are howling for his crucifixion. His own intimate friends & disciples have deserted him, & their leader Peter has disowned him. At this point the mother of Jesus re-appears.; Jesus is left with the women, the most disempowered in the culture of the time. “Woman here is your son”[ John the beloved disciple ] “woman” the same word used to address his mother at Cana with the brush off; now it is intimate “here is your son”. What Jesus did at Cana was only a miracle, & like all true miracles, it was done by divine power, & with this his mother had nothing to do. The human race isn’t saved by the miracles that Jesus worked; it is saved by his defeat, his failure, his acceptance of the Cross. The mission that Jesus knew himself to have from the Father was the mission to be fully human, to be loving & to be vulnerable, to be able to suffer& die. Jesus was the first completely human person because he lived & died by love, throwing himself away for the sake of his fellow human beings, even & most strikingly, for the sake of those who had no love for him. Of course, as with every human being, his humanity could only be perfected by God’s grace. By his death Jesus earned for himself the grace to conquer death & rise from the tomb, & overflowing from this same grace, he earned for his sisters & brothers to join him in his Resurrection. It was all made possible not because Jesus was eternally Son of God but because he was son of a woman. At Cana Mary had no part to play except to tell the servants to listen to him & to do what he told them. But at the Crucifixion his hour had come & Mary had everything to do with him & for him. For she gave him not his divinity but his humanity. “Woman, here is your son” isn’t Jesus speaking of the beloved disciple; he is talking of himself. Only then does he say to the disciple ”here is your mother” Jn 19;27 Jesus in his dying words makes Mary the mother of the Church which is now both Jewish & Gentile. She is the representative of the future, the virgin Mother Church from whose womb we have been reborn by our baptism; reborn to receive the new life of the Spirit which comes to us from the Cross, the Spirit who is Lord & giver of life, the life of love in which we shall live in eternity.” [ “God, Christ & Us “ Herbert McCabe OP ]
In this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity please pray specially for Rev Catherine Reid & our brothers & sisters in Christ at St Hilda’s. We pray in gratitude for those of other denominations who come here faithfully with their Catholic husband wife or child, & who season our bread-making & lovemaking with their presence & prayers. .Let us also remember the dis-unity closer to home, in our families, in my Community, & in the pews of our Church, where we are commissioned & empowered to acknowledge the wound the pain & the opportunity for me [not us;first me, then us later ] to offer a sign of peace, a miracle, a sign in itself, less vinegar more wine, as we begin to share each others real stories, of failure, on a steady graceful journey towards resurrection. One bread one body feeding all, “especially those who seemingly had no love for him”..but the Father knows differently! Enjoy your Unity Week ; with love & my prayers. Fr Bede