When Jesus changed water into wine in order to keep the wedding festivities going at Cana (John 1) He gave us an image that is not easily forgotten. The story is exuberant enough to be open to all sorts of interpretation. A wedding feast in Scripture, for one thing, suggests life with God, the time of the victory of God over all that is wrong. The story in John tells us, too, that the wedding celebration has already begun; you can hear the tinkle of glasses, the music and the uproarious laughter of people at their happiest. Elsewhere in John’s Gospel we hear that Jesus came to bring us more abundant life (John 10:10). The transformation that Jesus the Messiah brings is not simply in the future but present now. One way in which He transforms life now is by showing us that God’s grace is present here and now in all of life; that’s what the presence of Christ in the bread and wine at Mass affirms. As a consequence all of life is potentially significant, full of meaning and value. Life has been changed as the water was. We aren’t to look for God in extraordinary signs in the heavens but in the routine of daily life, in the faces and foibles of all we meet. We can find God not only in the joyous and delightful moments of life but also in the painful and tormented moments, too. God in Christ is there with us also. What He did in coming to earth for thirty some years in the first century tells us what is true always. He is always “God with us.”
— Don Talafous OSB
Food For Reflection 