HOMILY XIII. ON THE SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY.
JOHN. II. At that time there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there, etc.
Our Lord and Savior, having been invited to the wedding, not only deigned to come but also to perform a miracle there to gladden the guests, confirming rightly the faith of believers by means of the figures of heavenly sacraments, even according to the letter. Furthermore, it indicates how damnable the disbelief of Tatian, Marcion, and others who disparage marriage is. For if there were guilt in an undefiled bed and marriages celebrated with due chastity, the Lord would by no means have wished to come to these, or to consecrate them with the beginnings of His signs. But now, because conjugal chastity is good, widowhood's continence is better, and virginal perfection is the best, He deigned to be born from the inviolate womb of the Virgin Mary to validate the chosen status of all degrees while distinguishing the merit of each. Immediately after His birth, He is blessed by the prophetic lips of the widow Anna; as a youth, He is invited by those celebrating weddings and honors them with the presence of His power. But now let us return to the higher joy of the heavenly figures. For the Son of God came to the wedding to perform miracles on earth, to indicate that He Himself is the one of whom the Psalmist foretold under the symbol of the sun: "And He like a bridegroom coming out of His chamber rejoiced as a giant to run His course; His going forth is from the end of heaven" (Ps. 19:5-6). He also said elsewhere concerning Himself and His faithful: "Can the children of the bridechamber mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and then they will fast" (Matt. 9:15). For indeed from the time when the incarnation of our Savior began to be promised to the patriarchs, it was awaited with many tears and mourning of the saints until it came. Similarly, since His ascension to the Father after the resurrection, all the hope of the saints depends on His return. But in the time He lived among men, they could not weep and mourn because they had Him with them physically whom they loved spiritually. Therefore, Christ is the bridegroom, His Church is the bride, and the children of the bridegroom or the wedding are each of His faithful: the time of the wedding is that time when through the mystery of the incarnation He united to Himself a holy Church. Thus, by no accident but by the grace of a certain mystery, He came to a wedding celebrated in a carnal manner on earth, Who descended from heaven to earth to bind the Church to Himself with spiritual love; whose chamber indeed was the unstained womb of the mother, in which God was joined to human nature and from which He proceeded as a bridegroom to associate with His Church. The first site of the wedding was in Judea, where the Son of God deigned to become man, to consecrate the Church with the participation of His body, and to confirm it in faith with the pledge of His Spirit. But when the Gentiles were called to faith, the joyous celebration of these same weddings extended to the ends of the earth. Nor is it without mystery that it is reported that the wedding took place on the third day after the events previously described by the Evangelist, but it designates that in the third age of the world the Lord came to unite the Church to Himself. For the first age of the world was under the exemplars of the patriarchs before the law, the second under the writings of the prophets within the law, and the third under the grace proclaimed by the evangelists, shining upon the world as the light of the third day, in which our Lord and Savior appeared born in the flesh for the redemption of humanity. But even the fact that the wedding took place in Cana of Galilee, that is, in the zeal of a completed transmigration, typically announces that those are especially worthy of Christ’s grace who burn with the zeal of pious devotion, and emulate greater charisms, and know to migrate from vices to virtues, from earthly to eternal desires, by good deeds, hoping and loving. As the Lord reclined at the wedding, the wine ran out, so that with the wine made better by His miraculous order, the glory of the hidden God in the man might be manifested, and the faith of believers in Him might grow stronger. And if we seek the mystery: at the manifestation of the Lord in the flesh, the sweet meaning of the old law began to gradually fail due to the carnal interpretation of the Pharisees, which He soon converted to spiritual doctrine, and by the power of evangelical heavenly grace altered the entire surface of the legal letter, which is to make wine from water. But first let us attempt to understand what it means when the wine ran out, and the mother of Jesus said to Him:
"They have no wine." He replied: "What is that to you and to me, woman? My hour has not yet come." For He would neither dishonor His mother, who commands us to honor father and mother, nor deny that she is His mother, from whose virginal flesh He did not disdain to take flesh, even with the Apostle as a witness who says: "Who was made to him from the seed of David according to the flesh" (Rom. 1:3). How could He be from the seed of David according to the flesh, if not from the body of Mary according to the flesh, who descended from the seed of David? But in saying, while about to perform a miracle, "What is that to you and to me, woman?" He signifies that He did not receive the beginning of His divinity, by which the miracle was to be accomplished, from His mother temporally, but always had eternity from the Father. "What is that to you and to me, woman?" He says, when the divinity, which I always had from the Father, is not shared with your flesh, from which I took flesh. But the hour will come when He will show what He had in common with His mother, when, dying on the cross, He took care to commend the virgin to the virgin disciple. For suffering the weakness of the flesh, He piously commended His mother, known by this, to the disciple whom He loved most, while pretending not to recognize her as if unknown when about to perform divine things, because He acknowledges that she is not the author of His divine birth.
There were, however, six stone water jars set there for the purification of the Jews, each holding two or three measures. Water jars are called vessels prepared to receive water: for in Greek, ὕδωρ is called water. Water, however, designates the knowledge of the sacred Scriptures, which is accustomed both to cleanse its listeners from the filth of sins and to quench them from the fountain of divine knowledge. The six vessels in which the water was contained are the devoted hearts of the saints, whose perfection of life and faith has been proposed as an example for right living and believing to the human race through the six ages of the passing world, that is, up to the time of the Lord's Passion. And well are the vessels stone: because the hearts of the just are strong, as it were solidified by the faith and love of that stone which Daniel saw cut out of the mountain without hands, made into a great mountain, and filled the whole earth, and of which Zechariah says: "In one stone, seven eyes are fixed" (Zech. III); that is, in Christ the entirety of spiritual knowledge dwells: to whom also the Apostle Peter refers, saying: "Coming to Him, a living stone, you are being built up as living stones" (1 Pet. II). Well were the water jars placed according to the purification of the Jews only, because to the people of the Jews only was the law given through Moses. For the grace of the Gospel and the truth were made not less to the Gentiles than to the Jews through Jesus Christ. He says, each holding two or three measures, because the authors and ministers of the sacred Scriptures, the prophets, sometimes speak only of the Father and Son, as in: "You have made all things in wisdom" (Psalm 104). The power of God in wisdom is Christ: sometimes they also make mention of the Holy Spirit, as in the Psalmist's word: "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm, and all their power by the spirit of His mouth" (Psalm 33). Understand by the word of the Lord and the spirit, the whole Trinity, who is one God. But as much as the difference between water and wine, so much is the difference between the understanding by which the Scriptures were comprehended before the advent of the Savior, and that which He Himself revealed to the apostles when He came, and which their disciples were left to follow perpetually. Indeed, the Lord could have filled the jars with wine, who at the beginning of human creation made all things from nothing; but He preferred to make wine from water, typically teaching that He had come not to dissolve and disapprove the law and the prophets, but rather to fulfill them, and to do and teach nothing through the grace of the Gospel other than what the legal and prophetic Scriptures indicated He would do and teach. Therefore let us see, brothers, six water jars filled with the saving water of the Scriptures, and let us see that same water turned into the most delightful smell and taste of wine. In the first age of the world, the righteous Abel was killed by the envy of his brother: and for this very reason, blessed with the eternal glory of martyrdom, he received the praise of righteousness even in the Gospel and Apostolic writings, and the impious fratricide suffered the penalties of eternal curse. Whoever, hearing these things, fears to be condemned with the wicked, desiring to be blessed with the righteous, will cast away the spark of all hatred and envy, and take care to please God through the sacrifice of righteousness, modesty, innocence, and patience, they find a vessel full of water in the Scripture from which they may rejoice to be washed and quenched wholesomely. But if they understand that Cain, the murderer, is the perfidy of the Jews, and the killing of Abel is the passion of the Savior, and the earth that opened its mouth and received his blood from the hand of Cain is the Church, which received the blood of Christ shed by the Jews in the mystery of its renewal, they surely find water turned into wine, because they understand the sacred sayings of the law more sacredly. In the second age of the world, the world was destroyed by the waters of the flood because of the magnitude of sins, but only Noah was saved because of his righteousness with his household in the ark. Upon hearing about the horrible devastation of this plague and the marvelous liberation of the few, whoever begins to live more uprightly, desiring to be freed with the elect and fearing to be exterminated with the reprobate, surely finds the water jar by which he would be cleansed or refreshed.
But indeed, when he begins to look more deeply, and understands the Church in the ark, Christ in Noah, the water that deluged the sinners as the water of Baptism, which washes away sins, the various differences of those baptized in the men and animals the ark contained, the dove, which after the flood brought the olive branch into the ark, as the anointing of the Holy Spirit with which the baptized are imbued, he marvels indeed at the wine made from water, because in the old history of the event he contemplates his own cleansing, sanctification, justification being prophesied. In the third age of the world, God, testing Abraham's obedience, commanded his only son whom he loved to be offered as a burnt offering to Himself. Abraham does not delay to do what he is commanded, but a ram is sacrificed instead of his son, yet he is endowed with the inheritance of eternal blessing because of his extraordinary virtue of obedience. Behold you have the third jar. Hearing how great the virtue of obedience is, how great the reward it receives, you yourself strive to learn and have obedience. But if you understand the sacrifice of the beloved only son as His passion, about whom the Father says: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased (Mt. III); in which, because the divinity remained impassible, only the humanity suffered death and pain, the son is as if offered, but the ram is slaughtered. If you understand the blessing which was promised to Abraham, to be fulfilled in you through the faith of the nations, surely for you He has made wine from water, because He has opened the spiritual sense, the new fragrance of which inebriates you. At the beginnings of the fourth age, David is chosen for the salvation of the kingdom of the Israelite people, humble, innocent, and meek, an exile for him whose unjust persecution he endured for a long time. Behold, the fourth jar is filled with the fountain of salvation. Anyone hearing this and striving to humility and innocence, and beginning to repel pride and envy from his own heart, finds it like a draft of the clearest water, by which he is refreshed. But if he understands that Saul represents the Jews persecuting, and David represents Christ and the Church, perceiving that due to their infidelity both their carnal and spiritual kingdom has been destroyed, but the kingdom of Christ and the Church is always to remain, surely he senses the cup of wine made from water; since he knows himself and his life and kingdom, but even the very king, where previously he read it as if of others in the old history. In the fifth age of the world, the sinning people are carried off into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon: but after seventy years, penitently and corrected, they are led back to their homeland by Jesus the great priest, where they rebuild the house of God that was burned and the holy city that was destroyed. Reading or hearing this, anyone who takes heed of the fear of sinning and runs to the remedy of penance, is washed with the purifying water of the jar. But if he has learned to understand Jerusalem and the temple of God as the Church of Christ, Babylon as the confusion of sins, Nebuchadnezzar as the devil, Jesus the great priest as Jesus Christ the true and eternal high priest, seventy years as the fullness of good works which are granted through the gifts of the Holy Spirit, namely for the sake of the Decalogue and the sevenfold grace of the same Spirit, and sees this happening daily, some being snatched from the Church by the devil through sin, others being reconciled through Christ by the grace of the Holy Spirit through repentance, he has wine made from water; because, understanding that what is written pertains to him, he immediately, with great fervor of contrition, as if heated by new wine, demands to be liberated through the grace of Christ from whatever sin of captivity he finds in himself. At the beginning of the sixth age of the world, the Lord appearing in the flesh, on the eighth day of his birth according to the law He was circumcised, and on the thirty-third day after this He was brought to the temple, and the legal offerings were made for Him. Intuiting these things to the letter, we openly learn with how great diligence the mysteries of evangelical faith are to be undertaken by us, when He Himself, bringing the blessing of grace, who gave the law of the letter, first cares to be consecrated by the ritual ceremonies of old, by which He consecrates all things divinely, and thus to simultaneously undertake and deliver the new sacraments of grace. Behold, the sixth jar brings water purer than the others, to wash away the contagions of sin, to drink the joys of life.
But if in the circumcision of the eighth day you understand baptism, which in the mystery of the Lord's resurrection redeemed us from the death of sins, and you recognize it as prefigured in the presentation in the temple and the offering of a cleansing sacrifice, you know that the faithful are to enter from the baptistery to the holy altar and should be consecrated with the unique victim of the Lord's body and blood, symbolized by the wine made from water, a most excellent gift indeed. Furthermore, if you interpret the day of circumcision as the general resurrection of the human race, when the mortal offspring will cease, and all mortality will be changed into immortality, and you understand that the circumcised are brought into the temple with sacrifices, then after the resurrection, when the universal judgment is fulfilled, the saints, now made incorrupt, will enter to contemplate perpetually the visage of divine majesty with the gifts of good works: indeed, you will marvel that wine is made from water, whose creator you rightfully proclaim and say: And your cup inebriating, how splendid it is! Therefore, the Lord did not wish to make wine for the joys of the wedding out of nothing, but commanding that the six jars be filled with water, He miraculously converted this into wine, because He granted the six ages of the world the largesse of saving wisdom, which however, He himself, coming, enriched with the power of superior understanding. For what the carnal minded carnally understood, He revealed to be understood spiritually. Do you want to hear, brothers, how He made wine from water? He appeared after His resurrection to two disciples walking on the road, and He went with them, and beginning from Moses and all the prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. Do you want to hear again how they were inebriated with the same wine? Later, recognizing who it was who imparted to them the word of life, they said to each other: Was not our heart burning within us while He spoke on the road and opened the Scriptures to us? (Luke 24).
Jesus then says to the servants, "Fill the jars with water." And they filled them up to the brim. What do the servants who are commanded to do these things signify, if not the disciples of Christ, who filled the jars with water? Indeed, they did not themselves fill past ages of the world with legal and prophetic writings, but by wisely understanding and faithfully revealing, because the Scripture, which was ministered by the prophets, was both beneficial for drawing heavenly wisdom and useful for the correction of actions. They filled them up to the brim because they rightly understood that no age of the world was devoid of holy teachers, who by words, examples, or even Scriptures, would open the way of life to mortals.
And he says to them, "Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet." And they took it. The master of the banquet is someone learned in the law of that time, perhaps Nicodemus or Gamaliel, or his disciple then Saul, but now Paul the apostle, the teacher of the whole Church. And when the word of the Gospel, which was hidden in the letter of the law and the prophecy, is entrusted to such people, wine made from water is indeed offered to the master of the banquet. Hence it is fittingly stated that the master of the banquet, having called the bridegroom, said:
"Every man sets out the good wine first, and when they have become drunk, then that which is worse. But you have kept the good wine until now." Because it is the mark of teachers to know the distinction between the law and the Gospel, between truth and shadow, and to offer the new grace of evangelical faith and the eternal gifts of the heavenly homeland, in comparison to all old institutions and all earthly kingdom promises.
This beginning of signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory. He manifested by this sign that He was the King of Glory, and therefore the Bridegroom of the Church, who would come to the marriage as an ordinary man, but as the Lord of Heaven and Earth, would change the elements as He willed. The beautiful harmony of events is that He, at the beginning of the signs which He was to show to mortals while He was still mortal, changed water into wine: He, by the beginning of the signs which He, having become immortal through the resurrection, was to show to those pursuing the studies of immortal life alone, imbued their previously carnal and as it were insipid minds with the flavor of heavenly knowledge. For at first remaining on earth, by the gift of His Spirit, He opened their understanding so that they might understand the Scriptures: and afterwards, sending the same Spirit from Heaven, He infused their hearts with greater fervor of heavenly love and spiritual wisdom, additionally giving them the knowledge of all languages, by which they might adequately offer to the whole world the grace of life which they had received. These, therefore, are the nuptials of Christ and the Church, dearest brothers, which were then prefigured in one city, and are now celebrated throughout the whole world, let us love with all our mind, and let us diligently unite ourselves with the heavenly joys of these, by intent of indefatigable good works. Since by faith we have been called into the world of love, let us strive to celebrate, and let us carefully wash away the stains of our actions and thoughts before the day of the final judgment by examining them; lest perchance the King entering then, who made the marriage feast for His Son, if He sees us not having the wedding garment of love, cast us out, and binding our feet and hands from good actions, send us into outer darkness. Let us cleanse the strong vessels of our hearts by faith according to the purification of the heavenly precepts, let us fill them with the water of saving knowledge, by frequently attending to sacred reading. Let us ask the Lord to warm with the fervor of His love the very grace of knowledge He has bestowed upon us (lest perhaps it puff up), and to convert it to the seeking of higher things alone and wisdom, so that being spiritually intoxicated, we too may with the Prophet sing: You have made us drink wine of compunction (Psalm 59). Thus it comes to pass that, as we too make good progress, both now partially as we are able to contain it, and in the future perfectly, Jesus may manifest His glory to us, in which He lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, through all ages of ages. Amen.