WATER INTO WINE, OR WINE INTO WATER?

Today’s gospel of the wedding feast of Cana brings us back to Giotto again after last week’s cover showing his image of the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan. Giotto, the great transitional figure between the art of the Byzantine world and the first stirrings of the Italian renaissance, brought sturdy realism and vivid storytelling back into art after the ethereal gold-ground iconic traditions of the east. Giotto shows us, in something like episodic comic book style, a colorful wedding party at full tilt as it would have appeared in Northern Italy, ca. 1302 when he painted the Scrovengni Chapel at Padua. Dead center, the well-dressed bride and groom are mortified: the wine has run out. At the left, Jesus is telling the servant to have the steward fill six big-bellied water jars to the brim. On the right, dressed in her traditional blue, Mary the mother of Jesus smiles knowingly as the maître d’ along with his son—a spitting image of the well-fed employee—lifts tarnished silver beaker to his lips. His round belly is the same shape as the massive jars. He clearly knows and enjoys his vintages, and Giotto clearly was enjoying painting the scene. This is a condensed image of generosity. Mary feels the groom’s discomfort. Unseen here, but clearly related in the narrative, Mary, good Jewish mother that she is, hints that Jesus get about it and help out. When her son starts to demure that his hour hasn’t yet come, we can imagine that he gets “the look” from his mom. So Jesus gives the order to fill the jars with water. Mary smiles knowingly as the steward samples some really good wine. We can imagine her patting the maître d’ on the back. “That’s my boy...” The first miracle of the public life of Jesus, then, is a miracle of generosity, of fellowship, and community. And a reminder to us that it’s so much better to turn water into wine than wine into water. Changing the water of life into wine was a miracle of generosity. Changing the wine of generosity into H2O, or worse yet, vinegar, transforming the extraordinary into the mundane is temptation we all have to face often. A suggestion: resist the temptation, and raise a toast instead: “L’Chaim! To Life!” to draw down peace and blessings on our world.

FR. TOM LUCAS