By Gary Topping–
My posting last week included a brief mention of Deacon John Keyser’s homily, “When the Wine Runs Out,” which he read to us when he brought Holy Communion to us in our home last weekend. In the teasing relationship he and I have developed over many years, I offered some irreverent interpretive “suggestions.” But it was a powerful homily, and despite my irreverence, I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind.
His reference, of course, is to the wedding at Cana, where the celebrants ran out of wine, leading to Jesus’ first miracle in which he created wine from water. Deacon John’s point is that the episode calls attention to the dark side, the inevitable side, of marriage. Every wedding I’ve ever been to, including my own, focused on the euphoric joy, the laughter, the drinking and the dancing and the happy thoughts of the future. But in Deacon John’s interpretation of the Cana wedding, there is a warning, that the wine won’t last forever. It will run out.
It will run out, friends; it will run out.
What do you do then? Some people just give up and go their own ways. Wiser souls, though, will find a way to refill those jugs.
For Catholics, the solution is simple, though not always easy to achieve. In Catholic marital theology, marriage is not just a two-way contract, for Jesus is also there as an equal partner. In our own wedding, my wife and I were astounded, when we joined hands to exchange our vows, that the priest placed his stole over our hands, indicating with huge forcefulness that this was much more than contracting a mortgage or a car deal; it was a sacrament, just as his consecrating the Eucharist for us in a few minutes was going to be. So what do we do when the wine runs out? We go back to our third partner, Jesus, and remember what Mary his mother told the servants: “Do whatever he tells you.”
Other people can find similar ways back to those full jugs. They can remember what brought them to Cana in the first place. They can remember the joy that their children brought to them. They can remember the joyful and enriching shared experiences over the years. There are ways back.
At the end of the homily I told Deacon John that if he can find a way, this is a theme that he ought to work into every one of his wedding homilies. Can he do it? He is very clever preacher, and I think he can. But it will be an uphill pull, because nobody at the time of their wedding wants to think about the fact that it will inevitably be tested. But what better time to take some of that capital of good will and spend it on pointing out that those jugs are going to run dry?
