Today, Tobah 13 January 22, the Church celebrates the transformation of water to wine at the wedding of Cana of Galilee. It is one of the Lord’s minor feasts according to the rites of our church, for it is the first miracle that the Lord Jesus made and with which He started his declared ministry. Let us meditate upon this marvelous miracle.

+ God began His story with man with a joyful wedding in paradise after He had prepared everything for him. Likewise, our Lord Jesus started His ministry by attending a wedding at the town of Cana, north of Galilee. In doing so, He underlines the nature of His heavenly kingdom and His joyful message in which He likes to enter into a joyful wedding with mankind forever.

+After the fall of man and losing his fellowship with God, his life became full of sadness. Then, the Lord, the lover of mankind, came and was incarnated, carrying the keys of happiness to the dejected man. He came to save man from the predicament of destitute, inability, and shame. This is what the miracle at Cana of Galilee depicts in a delightful symbolic way.

+ Everything was fine at the beginning of the wedding, but suddenly they ran out of wine which is the drink of hospitality for these occasions. This was the beginning of the predicament; a wedding lacking wine, the inability to be hospitable is a great shame for the people hosting the wedding. Likewise, when man fell and became separated from God, he became destitute of joy, unable to love, and sin corrupted him so he fell into a great shame.

+ Nonetheless, through the Lord’s presence in the wedding, i.e. His incarnation amidst us, He restored what was corrupted and turned the table around in our favor once more.  The Lord intervened, through St Mary, and created new wine for the wedding. Likewise, on the spiritual level, He became united with our nature that He took from St Mary so we become a new creation in Him, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” (2 Corinthian 5:17). Additionally, we ought not to forget that creating new wine is only an ability of God the creator. In the beginning, He created man after His image, then came in the fullness of time to restore that distorted image by recreating man in Christ once more.  

+ Through the incarnation and redemption of the Lord Jesus, He addressed our poverty and granted us richness through His grace, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.”  (2 Corinthian 8:9). He also healed our inability as He gave us from His power and authority, and he placed His tremendous abilities in our hands, “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). He also took away our shame through the cross to grant us His glory and righteousness, “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

+ Moreover, as God revealed His divinity in the past when He converted water into blood in the land of Egypt, here He reveals His dominion over matter to prove that He is the same God of the Old Testament appearing in the flesh, “This beginning of signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory; and His disciples believed in Him.” (John 2:11)

+ Lastly, the new wine tastes completely different; it is sweeter and better quality. Similarly, the level of man’s taste of God in the New Testament, by the work of the Holy Spirit, through the church, within the soul is much higher than the rudimentary spiritual level of man in the Old Testament.