Yet only  two sentences fall from her lips:  “When the wine failed, the mother of Jesus said to Him, ‘They have no wine.’”  Our Lady intercedes for the embarrassed newly-wed couple.  And even though Our Blessed Lord replies: “O Woman … My hour has not yet come,” she  is confident that He will answer her plea.   She therefore says to the servants, “Do whatsoever He tells you.”     This is the final sound of her voice in the Gospels.  It is not a desire, not a wish.  Rather, it is an order, a command: “Do this ….”   The Blessed Mother well knows that when the servants carry out Jesus’ words, there will be wine.

 

*****

What has that to do with us today?  No one needs to be told that we live in perilous times.  More and more nations are developing the instruments of mass destruction, arms so powerful and numerous that they could well destroy the population of the earth.   Implicit or even open threats to use these weapons are angrily shouted among nations. 

 

There is, understandably, an anxiety that pervades many people, an  underlying fear which is coming more and more to the surface.  We look for security but there is none.  We yearn for peace but a world-wide depression,  terrorism and global wars are a constant threat.  All of us are affected, individuals, families, nations.

 

That the Woman of Cana  would hold the key to peace is not known by the governments of this world.   Even some Catholics would consider such a thought as nothing more than a pious devotionette. 

 

Yet her words to Her Divine Son do express the deep longing of the majority of the world’s citizens:  there is no wine, the new, overflowing wine of joy, deliverance and the  peace of the kingdom of God (cf Joel 3:18).  And even more.  We cannot forget that the Woman of Cana is the Woman of Calvary.  It is only there that her request at the Wedding Banquet is truly fulfilled.  It is only on Golgotha’s hill that Jesus fully responds to her plea, “They have no wine.”  Her Son pours forth His Blood from His pierced side.  Wine is now the Blood of Christ, drink for eternal life (Jn 6:54), as He teaches us at the Last Supper: “Drink of it all of you for this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Mt 26:27-28).

 

How do we find such wine?  Listen again to the Woman’s words: “Do whatsoever He tells you.”  Her command to the servants calls forth her Son’s miracle of transforming six stone jars of water into the best of wines.  There is the answer to our troubled times: Do whatsoever Jesus tells us in the Scriptures, through His Church.  Obedience to the Incarnate Word calls forth the wine which is the presence of Christ the Lord, the Prince of Peace.  In Him alone do we find the ultimate answer to the trials the world is now experiencing: do whatsoever He tells you

 

The strength to follow Jesus and thereby break with the profound secularism of our age, the courage to be the transforming voice of Christ in the midst of terror is found in the sacrificial wedding banquet of the Eucharist, the making contemporaneous with us the once and for all sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross.  It is at Mass that we eat His flesh and drink His blood: “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him” (Jn 6:56).  The Divine Liturgy is truly the source of power to do whatsoever He tells us.

 

Especially during this holy season of Lent, listen to the Woman of Cana. Has Jesus not given her to us as our Mother as she stood by the Cross? As her children we pay attention to her words, “Do whatsoever He tells you.”  There is the profound formula for peace.  And when we obey her command we hear the Lord say to us: “Peace I give to you, My peace I give to you” (Jn 14:27).

 

To be devoted to Mary  means to center our life on Her Son, doing whatsoever He tells us.  And who can deny that when we live in Christ Jesus,   we have found the source of peace?