SON, THEY HAVE NO WINE!
Reflections on the Importance of Devotion to Mary
By Rev. John J. Raphael, SSJ
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What is interesting here is that it was Mary who noticed it. Later in the
passage it will be seen that Mary was aware of the problem even before the
family was-they may never have known that there was a problem, talk about
being proactive! Mary was the one who first responded to this situation and
she brought it to Jesus' attention. Did Jesus need Mary to do this? Obviously
he could have handled this all by himself as he did with other miracles, but
the fact cannot be ignored that in this case he didn't act alone. Mary is shown
here to be a real person, a real mother with motherly instincts and compassion
not only for her own son but also for the children of these parents who would
have suffered great shame and ridicule had this crisis come to a head. Mary's
sensitive heart drew her to the fact that they had no wine and Jesus was drawn
into the event because of her concern.
And Jesus said to her, "O woman, what have you to do with me?
My hour has not yet come."
Whoa! What kind of response is this? Is this anyway for any son to
respond to his mother, much less for Jesus to respond to Mary? Volumes
have been written on this text. Some have legitimately seen a symbolic
usage of the title "Woman" here. Examining other techniques in John's gospel,
they have argued a connection here between the "Woman" of Genesis whose
seed crushes the head of the serpent (Gen 3:15) and the "Woman clothed
with the Sun" in the book of Revelation (Rev 12:1). There are other
possibilities as well, but for our purposes, let us simply evaluate
the text from a literal perspective.
This seems to be a rather strange, if not disrespectful, way of addressing
one's mother. Not surprisingly, some who have a pre-determined antipathy to
honoring Mary favor this reading of the text. But does the context support the
interpretation that somehow Jesus is denigrating Mary, or demeaning her presence?
The explanation is to be found in what follows this response. Before we get to
that, however, the other portion of Jesus' response must be considered,
"My hour has not come." In John's Gospel, Jesus' hour refers to his glorification
on the cross, his obediential sacrifice. Whatever is taking place, Jesus relates
it to his hour. Even this commonplace occurrence of lack of due preparation for a
wedding feast is related to the cross. For Jesus, nothing falls outside the mystery
of the cross. Every human endeavor, every instance of suffering, every need is drawn
up into Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. Jesus reinforces this with Mary in response
to her query, for he knows that she will one day be the woman at the foot of the
cross, when he beckons her to "behold her son" (Jn 19:27).
His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you."
No one knows their sons like mothers! If anyone did have questions about
the nature of Jesus' response to Mary and what it really meant, Mary was not
one of them! Mary's response was spontaneous and without hesitation. She heard
not only the words of her son, she heard the meaning of those words. She did
not question him or ask for clarification because she didn't need it. Such was
her intimate knowledge of her son. To understand this, we only have to draw from
human experience-and that is the beauty of the Incarnation, it makes human experience
a real and legitimate source of knowledge about things divine-God's son became
a man like us in all things but sin, thus he had real and true human experiences
including his relationship with his mother. Scripture gives us a few examples of
this. A powerful one is Mary and Joseph's experience of worry at the loss of Jesus
and bewilderment upon finding him in the temple in Jerusalem. Mary's anguish as a
mother is not concealed when she addresses Jesus before the elders in the temple.
Jesus' response to her is very mysterious, but also very definitive. Mary ponders
it in her heart and Jesus returns to Nazareth under Mary and Joseph's authority
(cf. Lk 2:42-52).
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