Water is the source of life. Jesus’ ministry begins in the waters of the Jordan. He who is without sin, the Christ, the Lamb of God enters the fray of human brokenness by blessing the waters of repentance with the Holy Fire of His Love. The touch of Jesus’ human body and divine Spirit with the Jordan River, turn the finite molecules of waters into infinite streams of Living Waters.
“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4: 13-14)
John the Baptist turns the ritual Jewish Mikveh, the tradition of purifying with clear cistern waters (Leviticus 11:36), upside down. John, in co-participation with Jesus, becomes an agency that gives water its instantiation of sacramental Grace; one of the greatest treasures of our faith.
John is granted a spiritual vision of God’s plan for His people, and he fulfills his mission with bold humility. He cavorts people to be baptized and “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” (Matthew 3:2). What we have in John’s preparatory declaration is a forerunner of Jesus’ ultimate gift of healing Mercy and Forgiveness.
Jesus hits the ground running. The Father’s sacrificial clock is ticking. Jesus wastes no time in planting His Father’s mustard seeds of Faith giving hope to the hopeless, and light to all living in darkness. St. John’s gospel describes Jesus’ first public sign: the Wedding Feast at Cana in Gallilee.
There are two things that with scriptural hindsight will not surprise us. First, Mary is at the heart of this miracle, and second this sign of God’s Loving presence and work in our lives takes places at a wedding.
Mary notices a need and compels Jesus to action. God gives Mary the extraordinary Grace of being born free from original sin. She was created as a purified human temple that is suitable for conceiving the Son of God by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Through the Divine Word made flesh, Mary entombs the death of human sin so that it might be transfigured by the resurrection of new life.
Mary catalyzes Jesus’ entry into public ministry. Her intimate, deep, nurturing, maternal, and trusting relationship with Jesus, previsages our inheritance in the Body of Christ. This is the Kingdom of God. Father and Son, bonded by the Love between them embodied through the Holy Spirit, and its reciprocal reality in us, is God’s plan.
We are being restored to our original relationship of communion with God and with each other. While we are neither the center nor the source of Creation, we are at the heart of God’s plan for Glorifying His Name through endless acts of love.
Made in the image of God we are invited to be active in serving through our every thought, word, action, inaction, intention, and prayer that contributes to the fruition of God’s AWESOME Love at work in the world. Through us, by us, and in us God’s Will is accomplished. The relationship between Mary and Jesus gives us a beautiful picture of how God works in the world.
Jesus’ choice of a wedding for his first public sign awakens our sacred imaginations. Two people become one through their consecration to God. Weddings express our spiritual DNA. We are wired for relationship; self-forgetting love in the service of others reflects the delicious sublimity of our ecstatic life in God.
During a Jewish wedding ceremony, couples drink wine from the same cup as an expression of cojoining their lives. Entangled physically and spiritually, couples are separate individuals acting as one body. Keep in mind, we are married to Jesus Christ and made One Body through our communion in the blood of Christ.
Jesus responds to the dwindling supply of wine. What has been made Holy and right through God’s blessing is about to go off the societal rails if the stash of inebriating beverages runs dry. Jesus acts in the world. He takes common water in earthen vessels and turns it into wine for unknowing guests to enjoy the abundance of a fine celebration.
Jesus is giving us a foretaste of the wedding feast of the lamb:
Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory. For the wedding day of the Lamb has come, his bride has made herself ready. She was allowed to wear a bright, clean linen garment.”
(The linen represents the righteous deeds of the holy ones.)
Then the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who have been called to the wedding feast of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These words are true; they come from God.”
(Revelation 19: 7-9)
How does Jesus take us from Baptismal Waters to the Waters of New Life? Everything leads to the Glory of the Cross. For Jesus to make things whole, and before there can be Glory, there needs to be sacrifice and suffering.
Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection become new wine poured out as a libation into new wine skins. Jesus is the wine made from the blood of His sacrifice, and it’s His Spirit living in us that become the new wine skins. Jesus transforms us into new creations.
At the Last Supper Jesus unites heaven and earth through His institution of the first Eucharist. Jesus knows what He must do to be obedient to the consummating covenant of the Father’s Love. Jesus falls to His knees in the Gethsemane Garden to face His agony in prayer.
Many artists have depicted Jesus accepting an empty chalice from the Archangel Gabriel who is there to console Him. Jesus fills the cup with His tears and blood.
And to strengthen him an angel from heaven appeared to him.
He was in such agony and he prayed so fervently that his sweat became like drops of blood falling on the ground. (Luke 22: 43-44)
Wine continues to play an important role during Jesus’ death. Mark’s gospel recounts two moments Jesus is offered wine. Sour wine laced with gall (made from myrrh) is offered to Jesus at the beginning of His crucifixion:
They gave him wine drugged with myrrh, but he did not take it. (Mark 15:23)
Jesus refuses the wine. Biblical commentators agree that Jesus refuses the wine because it would have numbed some of His pain. Jesus wanted to give everything to His Father.
Please excuse a brief tangent but I feel compelled to write a short prayer:
Jesus, you faced human pain with complete surrender. We beg you for the Grace and strength to offer you all of our onerous and debilitating physical, emotional, situational, and spiritual pain. May we turn away from anything that is not from you in living with our hardships. AMEN
Although Mark’s gospel has two accounts, we’ll look at John’s gospel:
After this, aware that everything was now finished, in order that the scripture might be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I thirst.” There was a vessel filled with common wine. So they put a sponge soaked in wine on a sprig of hyssop and put it up to his mouth. When Jesus had taken the wine, he said, “It is finished.” And bowing his head, he handed over the spirit.
Jesus is thirsty for souls. Jesus faces total abandonment on the cross as His Father disappears from His awareness (this is true death and something none of us want to experience which is why we must share the Good News with others).
We can try to contemplate the Father joining His Son in suffering under the abhorrent weight of man’s repugnant sins past, present, and future. Jesus lives a perfect life and fulfills His human mission. Worthy is the Lamb!
St. John’s narrative of the crucifixion ends with this…
… when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs, but one soldier thrust his lance into his side, and immediately blood and water flowed out.
(John 19: 33-34)
Jesus’ heart is pierced for our offenses and water and blood coming pouring out. This is the water that runs from the right side of the temple (Ezekiel 47: 1-6).
Jesus completes His salvific work. It began when Jesus changes the moving waters of our spiritual exigencies by touching them in the Jordan River with His heart, mind, body, and Spirit during His baptism.
We’ve been on this journey of transformation from water to wine. At every Eucharist our souls are renewed by the Precious Blood of Christ until that glorious day when we are washed in the Blood of Lamb and take our place in His Kingdom of Love.Jesus’ Precious Blood is the Living Water that Jesus promises us. Jesus Precious Blood have become the purifying waters that actualize lasting effects of our Baptism. Jesus puts us in the middle of the beginning of a never-ending story by filling His chalice with His sacrificial blood and water.
Jesus you are Mercy. Jesus you are Love. All praise and glory be to your Name now and forever! Please join me in offering Him unending cries of thanksgiving.
