The Queen's Request – The Wedding at Cana
Our Lord's first miracle took place at the request of his Mother – showing her power with him.
Our Lord’s first miracle took place at the request of his Mother – showing her power with him.
Editors’ Notes
This is a bonus instalment (without audio) of our Total Consecration series, coming in Week 3, and between Day 27 and 28. The purpose of this week is growing in knowledge of Our Lord, so that we may love him more dearly and follow him more nearly.
(Readers who are encountering this series for the first time through this article can find out more here.)
Today we are reading from Fr Coleridge’s account of the Wedding at Cana. For those who are not following the series, is a great standalone text in its own right.
We noted elsewhere Fr Aloysius Ambruzzi’s words on the importance of meditation on the public life of Our Lord. There can be no doubt that the common five-day Ignatian retreats lose something significant in omitting this, excellent though they are. And there can be no doubt that we are losing something in our preparation series too – but one meditation a day for a week is just not enough time to cover everything that happened in those three years. That is why we are trying to make up for this loss with these bonus instalments.
In due course we hope to supplement this Week on Our Lord with further meditations and recordings as well.
In the meantime, if readers want another very full resource for meditation on the public life of Our Lord, they should visit The WM Review’s project Father Coleridge Reader. We have just finished collating Fr Coleridge’s commentaries on the episodes recounted on the Sunday Gospels. If readers have a spare moment for spiritual reading or prayer, we refer them to the index to this project.
It would be good to return to the meditations on the Three Classes of Men and the Three Ranks of Humility this week – as well as the meditation on The Two Standards. They are a crucial part of growing in knowledge of Christ. We anticipated them in Week 0, but St Ignatius puts them with the meditations we are considering in Week 2 and 3:
Day 6: Satan’s battle plan to ensnare souls – and Christ’s battle plan to save them
The Two StandardsDay 8: Are you a weakling, a self-seeker... or something better?
The Three Classes of MenDay 9: Do we actually want what humility entails?
The Three Ranks of Humility
Finally, St Louis de Montfort recommends going to confession on the day of the consecration. Look ahead now, and consider whether you need to arrange that with a priest in advance.
CONTENTS:
READING: The text is based on an extract from Fr Henry James Coleridge SJ.
MEDITATION: The points for meditation are included below. A guide on how to use these points in meditation can be found here.
Reading: Mary at the Beginning of Signs
The Mother of the King, Chapter III.
Fr Henry James Coleridge
The Marriage at Cana
The marriage feast of Cana, at which we are now arrived, shows us our Blessed Lady in a more prominent position than the former incidents of the Public Life.1 In those she is withdrawn from the sight, and is cooperating with our Lord, most efficaciously indeed, but only by the way of prayer and interior activity. This kind of action of hers is that which is to be the general rule during the Public Life.
But there are to be exceptions to this general rule, occasions on which she comes forward openly to a certain extent, as if she had a special office to discharge to our Lord, apart from the general and most intimate interior companionship with Him which we suppose her to have enjoyed, and apart also from that perpetual exercise of the most powerful intercession, which is a work which she never ceases to perform for the benefit of the Church.
In this incident of the marriage feast she is almost as prominent as in that of the Visitation, which was the first of our Lord’s great spiritual miracles after His Incarnation, as this marriage feast is the occasion of His first great material miracle. In each of these our Blessed Lady has a part of her own to take.
Occasion of the feast
Although the time of their separation had not yet been long, still very much had happened since they parted on which our Blessed Lady would long to converse with her Divine Son.
The interval had been marked by splendid mysteries, the Baptism and the Vision of the Blessed Trinity, the Fasting and Temptation, and the first vocation of some of the future Apostles. The occasion of the meeting itself was full of holy interest to her, and the bridegroom and the bride were probably her relatives. The Hidden Life, which had consecrated the Christian family and all its beautiful charities, had not had room for the blessing of any marriage, and this was to be supplied on the occasion before us.
If there were nothing more than this in the mystery of which we are speaking, it would still be highly precious to us, as being the one occasion in our Lord’s life in which the blessing of His presence and the consecration which it involved were secured for the holy nuptial tie which was to be so largely enriched by Him with sacramental grace in the Church. To all holy and religious souls such occasions are times of much fervent prayer, for they imply an immense need of grace for the right and holy discharge of the duties which are then assumed. So in the large and motherly heart of our Blessed Lady the meeting would be one of great joy on this account also.
But it was also to be used by our Lord for a great step in the advance of His Kingdom, and for this advance Providence had arranged to make use of our Blessed Lady as an instrument.
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