Wednesday, April 5, 2006

Water Into Wine

This excerpt is talking about when Jesus turned water into wine at the wedding at Cana.
But how could he work a miracle immediately after he had said, "My hour is not yet come"? In those words is the mystery of Cana. What did he mean by his hour? Once he has begun his public teaching, it always means the time when he should die and be glorified by his Father. That meaning would not fit here. Evidently he means that the moment has not yet come to show his power to the eyes of men. Then two surprises: Mary knows that he will show it all the same. One minute his hour had not come, the next it had.

Surely the Holy Spirit was at work. We know that Jesus went into the desert to be tempted by the devil because the Holy Spirit sent him there. His certainty that his hour had not yet come would have meant that the Holy Spirit had not yet told him that he was to show his power publicly. And now, suddenly, his Mother asks for a miracle. As we have seen, the life of the family at Nazareth had not been strewn with miracles ... Nazareth did not believe in him, was indeed the only town that wanted to kill him.

Mary could have asked him to work a miracle thus publicly, only at the command of the Holy Spirit: it was not in her nature to thrust bright ideas of her own on her Son. She asked him as she was bid, and the Holy Spirit moved him to do what she asked. Thus Mary, who by her obedience had brought her Son into life, now by his obedience brought him into public life.
To Know Christ Jesus by Frank Sheed

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