On emerging from the waters of the Jordan after His baptism by John the Baptist, Jesus was greeted by God witnessing to His Personal divinity as Son, and being given the mission of saving God’s People from their thraldom to sin:
The Spirit immediately drove Him
out into the wilderness (for) forty days, being tempted by Satan. (Mark 1: 12-13)
There, in the Judaean wilderness, Jesus’ holiness was confronted by the
lying Serpent to begin a contest that would only be resolved when Satan’s apparently
ultimate triumph – Jesus’ death on a Roman Cross – was transfigured by Jesus’ ‘Fiat’
of love and obedience to His Father into His ultimate saving work for our
salvation. This initial confrontation, however, was ended after forty days, when
the devil retired until a later time; whereupon Jesus – in the power of the
Spirit, Luke tells us -- set out for Galilee with some committed disciples.
On the way home to Galilee Jesus
‘dropped-in’ on a wedding feast where His mother was one of the guests invited along
with Jesus and His disciples. Mary seems
to have thought that Jesus’ arrival was providential,
for she immediately had something to ask of Him concerning the newly-wed
couple:
The mother of Jesus said to Him,
"They have no wine."
Jesus did not think that was a matter to concern Him Personally:
He had recently been manifested as Son of God and ‘installed’ as Israel’s
Messiah at His baptism, and He had come to Galilee (with five newly-chosen
disciples) to begin His Public Ministry in
accordance with His Father’s saving will, which was that He should reverse
Satan’s original victory over Adam and Eve. Jesus most certainly did not want
His Father’s commission to be immediately prejudiced by His mother’s emotional
involvement with the married couple. His mind being centred on His Father’s
‘commission’, He did most clearly remember Eve’s close association with the
original ‘garden’ wounding of His Father’s heart …. and spineless
Adam’s subsequent words of blame against
God:
The WOMAN whom YOU gave to
be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree.
Therefore Jesus, totally committed to His heavenly Father, said:
WOMAN,
what does this have to do with Me? My hour has not yet come.
Mary apparently wanted Jesus to use His ‘mission power’ to accommodate
her personal wishes first of all, therefore Jesus said: WOMAN!
However, God the Father had a particular appreciation of Mary
who had devoted herself totally to the welfare of her Child – His Word made
flesh -- by nourishing and protecting Him, but above all, by teaching Him all
she knew of God: opening up her own mind and heart to her Child in order that
He might learn first how to pray and then how to respond to God in heaven as a
true Israelite, indeed, as the Chosen
One of a Chosen People.
Now Mary is about to be rewarded, acknowledged, for what
she had done for God's Son throughout His childhood years: she is to be
inspired to help her Son define and
make manifest the hidden nature and purpose of His work of salvation – a marriage
of world-wide and eternal significance: the heavenly union of redeemed mankind
with the God of their creation – by His, Jesus’, joyfully embracing and enabling
the earthly, but now to be ‘heavenly-graced’ celebrations of this, most needy, newly-wedded
couple.
How did Mary, under God's inspiration, do this? Very
simply, as you would expect:
His mother said to the
servants, "Whatever He says to you, do it."
Jesus immediately, instinctively recognized His Father’s influence
on, and gift to, His ‘strangely inconsistent’ mother, who now wanting not her
own will, but whatever Jesus might want.
The heavenly Father was inspiring Mary to give her Son a mother’s
blessing as He began His work of salvation: a work that would lead by way of
the Cross to His most glorious Resurrection.
God would not take Mary's Son from her: He had not done that to Abraham,
He would not do that to Mary. Mary,
however, being greater than Abraham, was uniquely privileged to bless her Son’s
future mission by helping Him choose this most appropriate occasion of love,
commitment, and joy for His first miracle.
Isaiah's prophecy was being fulfilled in Mary herself, the supreme
member of new-born Mother-Church:
You (Zion) shall be a glorious crown
in the hand of the Lord, a royal diadem in the hand of your God. (Isaiah 62:3)
The gifts of God cannot be numbered, and no one is left un-gifted,
such is St. Paul’s message today; and some of those gifts are, as might be
expected, beyond our imagining:
People of God, all who are serious disciples of Jesus must
be convinced that He does want to
use and ultimately glorify each and every one of us in Himself. We for our part,
however, must -- first of all -- want Him to do this with our lives; and then
we must learn to listen for His Spirit and respond without delay to His
promptings; only in that way can Isaiah's prophecy come to greater fulfilment
in us and in our days:
Nations shall behold
your vindication, and all kings your glory.
