“There were wedding festivities in Cana” (Jn 2:1)
Caná of Galilee
There is no consensus on the location of the biblical town of Cana. Among the various candidates, the Galilean town of Kafar Kanna, just 10 kilometers from Nazareth, appears to hold the strongest claims to authenticity and tradition. The town presents itself as a small urban cluster nestled on a gentle slope descending towards the fertile Galilean plains, now extensively cultivated by advanced agriculture in the State of Israel.
The identification of this town with the biblical Cana was made by a 6th-century pilgrim, who placed it a day’s journey from Sepphoris. The anonymous pilgrim claimed to have sat in the very seat where Jesus sat at the famous wedding, and even to have seen and touched the two jars of the miracle, though it is impossible to verify this account with certainty. What we do know for certain is that, from the 16th century onwards, the site of the present-‘Miracle Sanctuary’ was recognized as the location of the biblical wedding feast, as some excavations had revealed a hall with columns that immediately suggested a Byzantine basilica or a Crusader construction, and thus a Christian place of worship.
However, recent archaeological studies tend to recognize this hall as a synagogue, a Jewish sacred building from the first centuries after Christ, rather than a Byzantine or Crusader church, though there are also later Christian tombs. In other words, it cannot be definitively stated that this was a Christian place of worship or that it was visited by the anonymous pilgrim.
Therefore, it is even less possible to assert with certainty that this site corresponds to the one of the biblical wedding. However, this should not diminish the significance of this monument, which, at the end of the 19th century, was built by the Franciscans on the newly acquired land and used by the small Latin Christian community present there, as a memorial and reminder of the biblical miracle of Cana.
“There was a wedding feast” (John 2:1)
Rather than focusing on the specific details of this location, it is worth remembering that the columns and capitals from the ancient synagogue, the site discovered in the 16th century, were used to support the atrium of the present church, which, in its rather eclectic but monumental style, conveys a sense of serenity. In the sanctuary dedicated to the Miracle of Cana, we can see the very figure of Mary: not to seek her presence in a sacred place or in some part of the church, but upon entering, to let ourselves be embraced by the Virgin who became the Church.
It is no coincidence that parts of an ancient synagogue were used as the basis for the temple Christian atrium. If we recognize in the Church the figure of the Virgin, it is not strange to think that the authentic elements of Jewish religion and worship served as preparation and support on which Our Lady built her monumental faith and worship of the true God, whose definitive revelation occurred through Jesus Christ.However, one must remember that the episode of Cana in Galilee has much to teach us about our faith. An initial detail that surprised some Fathers of the Church is that the evangelical episode, though described with richness of detail, completely omits the identity of the two spouses. In this omission, we can see the sign of a spiritual interpretation of the episode: only Mary and Jesus are spoken of, indicating that they are the true mystical spouses, whose wedding is celebrated at Cana.The miracle of Cana marks the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, a ministry of teaching the truth and sanctifying souls, which is the mission entrusted to Him by the Father. However, this ministry establishes the New Covenant, which, as the prophets described it regarding the old covenant with YHWH, is well represented by the nuptial metaphor: just as YHWH married the people of Israel, now Jesus marries Mary, who occupies the place and represents the whole Church, the mystical people of true worshippers of God “in spirit and in truth” (Jn 4:23).It is true that the Church would only be generated with Jesus’ death on the cross, the fulfillment of His salvific and redemptive mission, but Mary already anticipated the Church, being preserved from any stain of sin, and occupying her place at the beginning of Jesus’ public life. No coincidence is observed between the episode of Cana and that of His death on the cross: Jesus’ enigmatic response to “the Woman” (“My hour has not yet come,” Jn 2:4) is related to the fulfillment of that hour on the Cross (“The hour has come,” Mk 14:41), before “the Woman” (Jn 19:26).The hour that had not yet come, i.e., the fulfillment of Redemption, is accomplished on Calvary with the birth of the Church, which is taken out from Jesus’ side, just as Eve was taken out from Adam’s side.Mary and GraceWhen contemplating Mary, the “Virgin made Church“, as Saint Francis of Assisi famously expressed, we can see that the episode at Cana has more to teach us. If the Virgin Mary represents the true faith of the chosen people, fulfilled in the definitive revelation of the Messiah announced, it is no less true that the new Law is primarily, as Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches, “a law of grace“. Jesus did not come merely to reveal the full face of God, revealing His Unity and Trinity, a mystery of love unknown to the Jews, but also to raise us to a new condition, the condition of sons of God by adoption through grace: this is the essence of the new Covenant.The Gospel account of Cana is one of the Scriptures’ best revelations of how, in the economy of supernatural grace, the Virgin Mary occupies a prominent place, that of the “Universal Intercessor“. Mary is not the source of grace, for supernatural grace can come only from God and not from Mary, who is a creature like us. However, by divine disposition, it is Mary who mediates grace, drawing it from the bosom of the Holy Trinity to dispense it to all men.On one hand, she is the one who brings the prayers and sufferings of men, in this case, the true spouses of Cana, ashamed by the lack of wine, to the loving Heart of Jesus, mediating thus, from below to above, the longings of men. On the other hand, from above to below, she obtains from her beloved Son intercessions for all men, including material graces or aids, as in the case of the wedding at Cana with the miracle of the wine, and the grace itself, which makes us sons of God.It is no coincidence that the very miracle of the wine can be the subject of a spiritual interpretation: the water turned into wine can represent our humanity (water) that, through the supernatural action of grace infused into our hearts, is divinized, in the sense that it becomes one with divine filiation, “participants of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4), and temple of the Holy Trinity, thus rising to heights unattainable for our human nature.The Mother of the ChurchIn this context, we discover that what we have hitherto considered as the “Virgin made Church,” a perfect model and example of the very Church, reveals itself, through her mediation of all graces in favor of all human beings, as the “Mother of the Church.” The Gospel account of Cana begins by calling the Virgin Mary “mother,” though this is understood in the sense of mother of Jesus (cf. Jn 2:1).Moreover, the miracle of Cana was interpreted by the Fathers and Doctors of the Church as a prefiguration of at least three sacraments. First, marriage, which, starting from its natural form of consent between man and woman (the simple water), becomes a sacrament, that is, an effective sign of the union between Christ and the Church (or the wine). Baptism can also be well represented, both by the transformation it brings to human nature, divinizing it with sanctifying grace, and by the fact that the Gospel informs us that the vessels used for the miracle were purification pails (Jn 2:6), a beautiful image of baptism in which sin is removed.Finally, the Eucharist is also well represented by the miracle of Cana, due to the common reference to wine and the transformation of substance that occurs in both cases. Therefore, the episode of Cana speaks of the sacraments of the Catholic Church, which are the gift and primary mission that our Lord left to the Church to save and sanctify human beings. At the moment the Church is born, or rather, on the Cross, is the water and wine that flow from Jesus’ side, from which the Church is drawn as the New Eve, not they themselves the sign of the sacraments, in particular Baptism and the Eucharist?The sacraments are the nuptial gift left by Christ to the Church, His bride, but above all, they were given to Mary, as Mother of the Church. It is she who always and until the end of time reminds the Church and its members of the call made for the first time in Cana: “Do whatever he tells you” (Jn 2:5). In the sanctuary of the miracle of Cana, as well as in all other churches on Earth, let us therefore allow ourselves to be embraced by the Mother of the Church, by He who generated the Church with Christ and who will assist her with her maternal protection until the end of time.The episode of the wedding of Cana is central to reflection on Mary’s mediation. The encyclical Redemptoris Mater by John Paul II dedicates a thorough analysis to this Johannine text as a revelation of Mary’s intercessory role.Deepen your studies: explore Mariology, Marian theology, Marian apparitions, and the Postgraduate Program in Mariology.
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