Full to the brim: Trusting in Mary’s command

‘Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding seventy or one hundred litres’ (John 2:6).

In Sunday’s Gospel, the water jars at the wedding feast in Cana were not for drinking but for purifying whoever had touched a corpse (Numbers 19:11–22). We can imagine the shock of the servants when Jesus told them to offer this water to their master. Yet they obeyed him, just as they had carried out his order to fill the jars. They had done so completely, right up ‘to the brim.’

What made these servants so docile to such bizarre instructions? Mary had commanded them to “Do whatever he tells you,” and her words were persuasive. They had seen her notice the lack of wine and generously intercede for the spouses with simple, direct words: “They have no wine.” It is easy to trust those who trust Jesus. Mary trusted her Son would act and so inspired the servants’ confidence in her.

Mary gives the same imperative to us: “Do whatever he tells you.” If we obey to the best of our ability, “to the brim,” no matter how surprising the indications are, then our little efforts will be transformed and multiplied into abundance.

If Mary beseeches Jesus for us, without us even prompting her, how much more will she do so if we specifically ask her! If Jesus worked a miracle for his mother even before his ‘hour’ had come, how much more will he do so now that the ‘hour’ of his death and resurrection has come!

That “hour” of Jesus was foreshadowed by this first sign: here and on Calvary, Jesus respectfully calls his mother “Woman”; here and at the Last Supper, drink is supernaturally transformed.

And we too are foreshadowed in this scene: we are to imitate the obedient servants, emulate Mary’s keen awareness of others’ needs and her intercession. But we can also see ourselves symbolised by the stone water jars: the most unlikely vessels became instruments of joyful and plentiful transformation. God chooses us as his instruments, despite our wretchedness.

Photo credit: Fr. Hugh Duffy blog

Fr David Howell is an assistant priest at St Bede’s in Clapham Park. His previous studies include canon law in Rome, Classics at Oxford and a licence in Patristics at the Augustinianum Institute in Rome. He is a regular contributor to the Catholic Herald; his other articles can be accessed here.

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