The Best Wine
Pierluigi Banna - “They have no wine.” Running out of wine at a wedding, in an era when there were no drunk driving laws yet, is like arriving at the checkout counter without your wallet or showing up for an exam and realizing you haven’t studied at all.
One finds oneself in a state of deep anguish—an experience so frequent among young and old today. Anguish is not only the failure of an accomplishment (not having thought about the wine) but also the fear of others’ judgment—the belief that, because of one failed task, you are entirely a failure.
The first attitude that overcomes anguish, as the first reading also shows us, is that of Mary. Faced with a shortage of wine, she does not simply comment on it with her friends or pity the young newlyweds; instead, she asks those who know more than she does and can do more than she can. Indeed, when we are distressed, we often think everything depends on us and that the whole world rests on our calculations. Yet we are made to open ourselves to the world, not to contain it in our minds.
For this reason, Mary turns to her Son.
Jesus thus receives the last teaching from his mother before beginning his mission. If he wanted to meet people and proclaim the riches he felt within, he did not need to start with words, as the scribes and Pharisees did; he had to start with their needs: the wine that was lacking, the daughter who was about to die, the disease that was not being cured. In short, Jesus learns from his mother that to understand who he truly is, he must reach out to people precisely where they are distressed.
Jesus, however, gives the first lesson to his mother. He does not merely replace what was missing; he does not simply provide the wine that was lacking but offers a new, better wine. He does not just straighten the legs of the crippled but also forgives their sins; he does not merely make the blind see but grants them faith in the light of life.
Jesus always does this with our anxieties when we bring them to him: he does not solve them for us but gives us better wine—a unique grace for facing them.
We, Jesus’ disciples, on hearing of this miracle, believe in him, just as those who were invited with him to the wedding believed in him. We believe in him because we have found someone to whom we can bring all our anxieties, especially when the wine of our hopes has run out.
Furthermore, we believe in him because our failures do not scandalize him, nor does he merely “cork” them; rather, he transforms our limitations—our anxieties—into the opportunity to give us an even better wine. We believe in him because we trust that every limitation can become the place where he manifests his glory. Like the servants, all we have to do is bring him our empty vessels and do whatever he tells us.
The author has not revised the text and its translations.
