#  Cana in Galilee: It Is Not Only Our Grief, But Also Our Joy That Christ Visits 

 





January 20, 2025

 

 

The Second Sunday in Ordinary Time fell this year on January 19. It was a day rich in opportunities for a homilist to speak to matters of great importance: the holiday commemorating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr (Jan 20); the inauguration of a new president (Jan 20); the Octave for Christian Unity, observed in many Christian communities, which began on Jan 18 and runs until the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul on January 25; the ceasefire in Israel and Gaza; the bloody and evil Russian invasion of Ukraine; the terrible, still-burning fires in LA. So much to talk about!

 ![Can in Galilee](/sites/g/files/omnuum2606/files/2025-01/David-MarriageCana-ca1501-1509_0.jpg)

 

Yet for my Saturday evening Mass in my parish, though I mentioned all these important events and concerns, I was caught up instead in the Gospel of the day, John 2.1-11, the story of the wedding feast in Cana, where Jesus changes water into wine — a Gospel passage so simple and powerful and beautiful that ought not be passed by even for the sake of very serious things:

> On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.

This is one of the very few scenes in all four Gospels where Jesus is seen at an “ordinary” event, neither in the Temple or a synagogue, or at Passover or another feast: simply a wedding in a village. (Another: Jesus visiting Mary and Martha after his friend Lazarus has died, in John 11.) Jesus’ mother Mary was invited, and Jesus and his disciples came along too. The drama at the center of the story is not a healing, nor an exorcism, nor a teaching, but something rather more mundane:

> When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ Now standing there were six stone water-jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, ‘Fill the jars with water.’

Surprise follows — an extraordinary volume of the best wine — and surely a livelier party through the night:

> And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, ‘Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.’ So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.’

John, in his typically original fashion, balances here the multiplication of loaves and fishes, mentioned in all the Gospels, the creation of an excess of wine, 180 gallons of it. On with the wedding reception! The scene concludes:

> Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

We can speculate about what exactly the sign is. The most straightforward interpretation might he that Jesus is the good wine saved until last. But it is also possible to see the entire scene as the sign — Jesus comes to people not only in their sorrow, but in their joy too, to save and enhance the joy and even more simply, to attend and enjoy a wedding — like a normal person. Yes, multiply the loaves of bread, since people hunger, and need food for their journeys. But yes too, give the best of wines: provide what we need to survive, but also give us our daily wine, what we need to flourish and be happy — this too in abundance. Come, rejoice with us.

The best interpretation of this kind that I have read is found in the famous “[Cana of Galilee](https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/fyodor-dostoevsky/the-brothers-karamazov/constance-garnett/text/chapter-3-7-4)” chapter of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s *The Brothers Karamazov*. Alyosha, the youngest of the brothers and the hero of the novel, has been mourning the death of his teacher the elder Zossima, and disturbed by the small scandal ensuing — the body is decaying. Yet he has just helped Grushenka, the strong but troubled woman sought after by both his father and his brother, to recover her own inner grace, the grace to forgive those who have harmed her greatly.

When Alyosha then returns to the monastery, where the body of the elder is laid out, Cana is being read. In a dreamlike state, he realizes what he is hearing, and what the sign is:

> Ah, yes, I was missing that, and I didn't want to miss it, I love that passage: it's Cana of Galilee, the first miracle.... Ah, that miracle! Ah, that sweet miracle! It was not men's grief, but their joy Christ visited, He worked His first miracle to help men's gladness.... ‘He who loves men loves their gladness, too’ ... He was always repeating that, it was one of his leading ideas.... (Garnett translation)

“It was not our grief, but our joy that Christ visited”: yes, Christ is with those who suffer, those in trouble, burdened with inner and outer ailments. No doubt. Yet he is also with those who rejoice, in all the times when life is good, happiness abundant, love possible and evident. Perhaps we can say: because Jesus fully shared the human condition and was with his sisters and brothers in the full range of human experiences, then he could enter too into their sorrows, and by his own death take our sorrows upon himself.

Back then to where I started, this Gospel passage on January 19, 2025: what to say about this wedding feast on the weekend of Christian Unity, in the shadow of an inauguration, on the day memorializing the life and deeds of Dr. King’s, as we pray that a ceasefire will hold, the war end, the fires be extinguished? Cana helps us to be with God’s people for the long run, in a deeper way, serious not just about everyone’s troubles, but happy in our joys as well. Rather than simply putting needy people on a to-do list, to be taken care of when trouble comes, we need also to slow down and enjoy life’s good things, to stay for a while, knowing that God will be here too: yes, break bread together, but also enjoy the heady wine that is no luxury but a sign of life’s vitality and joy: Whoever would love their sisters and brothers will love their gladness, too.