The Wedding Feast at Rosebud

The other day when we were discussing the rosary, one of our lovely readers left this response:

To your original correspondent: Take a lesson from the Blessed Mother at Cana (the changing of the water to wine). She didn't come to Jesus and tell Him what to do, or how to fix the problem. She merely presented the problem. "They have no wine." And even when her Son seemed to brush her off, she instructed those in charge of serving at the event, "Do whatever He tells you to do." She didn't tell Jesus HOW to solve the problem. She merely laid the problem at His feet, with quiet and steady faith that He would do SOMETHING.

The wedding feast at Cana has been my  little "Rosebud" for this week.  When I was in college, I happened upon some friends talking about "Citizen Kane", in particularly "Rosebud".  Then a couple of days later, some commercial or something that referenced "Rosebud" (I can't  tell you how without ruining the film) and a couple of more times that week "Rosebud" came up randomly in references and conversations. My friend, who was witness to this phenomena, and I really laughed when  Saturday night of that week we flicked on the TV and "Citizen Kane" was on.

And this week, I keep discussing the wedding feast at Cana.

I've always felt that the moral of the story was that Jesus listens to His mother.  I especially like to point this out to people who think that asking Mary to pray with us is a futile waste of time. "Oh, really?" I reply, coyly.  "And yet you, who insist you only talk directly with Jesus, have no problem asking me to pray for you. When Mary asked Jesus to do something about the lack of wine at the wedding, He does something. Immediately. On a day when He was just there to party."

Our reader is thinking along the same lines. Mary asked. Jesus answered.

But also this week, I had a conversation with a young lady who is a Methodist minister. When I say young lady, I mean she is younger than me, me, being as old as rope.  We were discussing Mother's Day and I was the one who brought up my wedding feast at Cana observations.

"Oh!" she giggled. "I had a class with a Bible theologian who had a completely different take on that one!"

It seems this fellow thought that the joke was on everyone. You may recall that a key component to the story is that Jesus was pretty cranky about being asked to do something. He wasn't ready to reveal Himself as someone who might change water into wine just yet and He says this in no uncertain terms. This theologian thought that Jesus didn't change anything into anything and merely instructed the sewards to pour the icky water where everyone had been washing their feet and all into the wine jugs. Done and done.

The theologian pointed out that weddings were days long celebrations back then and that everyone would have been pretty much in the tank by this time.  Their happy taste of the "new wine" was a hilarious joke Jesus pulled, along the lines of "the Emperor has no clothes".

I can't think what point this fellow thought including this story in the New Testament would serve, if this was the idea.  For one thing, it's so mean! ugh.  It harkens back to the "killer baby Jesus" stories in the Book of James, where Jesus is a scary kid who can wish you into the cornfield.  Jesus is called upon for help and His response is to trick everyone into drinking bathwater? 

I don't think so.

I'm going with "Jesus listens to His mom".

Also this week I visited a man who was putting all his things in storage and I laughed and told him his garage looked like the last scene in "Citizen Kane" where Charles Foster Kane's Xanadu is being packed up and things are being thrown into a giant furnace.  I revealed the end of the film, never imaging that a man of his age had not seen that.

He had not.

Oops.