September 18, 2023 β’ 15 mins
How well do you know the mysteries and rich symbolism of the Bible? Join us as we unlock biblical secrets with our Hosts Jordan Whiteko, Father Chris Pujol, and Father Andrew Hamilton. Father Hamilton sets the scene for us as we journey to the wedding feast of Cana, the backdrop for Jesus' first recorded miracle, where water is transformed into wine. Father Hamilton paints a stunning picture of life in Cana, where everyone in the town is invited to the wedding. We delve into the profound meaning behind Jesus addressing Mary as 'woman', a seemingly simple term that harbors connections to the new Adam and Eve, and ultimately, the redemption of the world.
Ever pondered why the best wine was served last at Cana? It's a potent symbol of God's abundant generosity, even when we least deserve it. As we step into the shoes of the amazed banquet servers, we begin to understand the grandeur of the miracle that unfolded before their eyes. Father Pujol shares insights on this divine display of grace, reminding us of God's ceaseless love. Prepare to see this biblical tale in a new light, deepening your understanding of God's grace, and His desire to serve the best for last.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jordan Whiteko (00:00):
You're listening to the Catholic Accent Podcast.
In this podcast, we discuss theacts and miracles that Jesus
performed that stunned hisdisciples.
Today's topic is the weddingfeast of Cana.
I'm Jordan Waikko, along withFather Andrew Hamilton and
Father Christopher Poojol, andwe're both stunned.
It's so good to be with both ofyou today.
(00:20):
Why don't you set the scene forme?
What would a Jewish wedding ofthat time period in Galilee have
been like?
Fr. Chris Pujol (00:26):
Well, father Hamilton actually just came back
from the Holy Land, so we'lllet him set the stage, because
one of his favorite pastimes is,of course, going to weddings.
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (00:35):
It was so nice of you to let me set the
entire scene for us here.
Cana of Galilee right when yougo there now and modern Israel.
It's a much bigger place thanit would have been at the time,
but Cana would have just been asmall town that Jesus would have
been very close to, my guidesaid whenever I was in Israel
maybe like four to five hundredpeople.
The interesting part of that isthat it's such a small town
(00:57):
that back then, most people thatlived within a small town were
related to one another.
People have some sense of thisstill, Maybe if they come from a
smaller town in westernPennsylvania that you have a lot
of relatives.
I remember growing up in FordCity.
My parents are from Leechburg,my whole family was from
Leechburg and I wasn't relatedto anybody in Ford City High
School and that was like abizarre thing for people.
Everybody was like a cousin ofsomebody.
(01:17):
So you never, talk bad aboutanyone, right, don't burn your
bridges, but nonetheless, canaof Galilee, the old hospitality
laws at the time of Jesus, wouldhave necessitated that, if
anybody that was related throughmarriage by blood, whatever it
might be, you would be theninvited to the actual wedding
itself, and so my guide said,most likely almost the entirety
(01:38):
of the town of Cana would havebeen invited to the wedding of
whoever this mysterious couplewould have been.
Fr. Chris Pujol (01:44):
So that really would have been a great wedding.
I'm sure A lot of people.
Jordan Whiteko (01:48):
Yeah, but everybody.
You'd be related to everybody,so like you couldn't mingle you
know, jordan's looking for awife.
So did you happen to see awedding while you were there?
There was no weddings while Iwas there.
Do you know like do they stillpretty much invite the entire
town?
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (02:06):
I don't know about that, but in terms of
the church where this miraclewould have happened, that's
built on the ruins over time ofancient Israel, and then the
Crusader church and then now themodern church that's there and
one of the side chapels.
It's a tradition that basically, couples come there and they
renew their wedding vows, sopeople witness a wedding in that
sense, but more Christianmarriage than Jewish.
Jordan Whiteko (02:26):
Yeah, yeah, yeah .
So you talked about the miracle, and the disciples were at this
wedding party with Jesus andhis mother after just meeting
Jesus.
What do you think their firstimpression was when they were at
that wedding and they ran outof wine and Jesus was called to
act.
Fr. Chris Pujol (02:44):
Well, I think, first, the disciples would have
first been stunned by the factthat they went to the wedding,
right, because they weren't fromCana and they were passing
through, and yet they wentanyways, because Jesus knew this
couple, and the Blessed Motherwas there as well.
And I think, to see Mary's roleto begin with, that is, a woman
in that time period is the onewho's commanding her son to do
(03:06):
something and act, is a momentfor all of us to pause and see.
You know, running out of wineat a wedding, especially around
here, seems to be a commonreality, right, and we can go
get more because people enjoythemselves at weddings and
loosen up, but for them to runout here would be a great
disgrace, because it was alwaysthat the abundance of the wine
(03:29):
and of the food showed theabundance of the love of the
couple and of the familiescoming together.
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (03:34):
They knew how to party, in comparison to
us today.
Right, weddings weren't justlike one evening after an hour
in a church.
It was like a week week day, soyour preparations for that
wedding were immense.
Jordan Whiteko (03:44):
So that explains why it needed to be done.
They wanted the party to keepgoing, essentially.
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (03:49):
Absolutely Well.
It's an overabundance of God'sgrace which is then flowing from
that marriage which, even inancient Israel, judaism marriage
is the bedrock of societyunderstood, of course, go the
whole way back to Genesis, rightman, woman together.
It's bad that man is alone,which takes us into something
else within the actual storyitself, which is why does Jesus
(04:10):
call his mother woman?
It seems very odd, or maybeabrupt that he would do so, but
it's actually there's a twofoldnature to this, one being more
spiritual and then one cultural.
The spiritual would have beenhe's making reference the whole
way back to Eve.
So one of the titles that weknow the Blessed Virgin under is
the new Eve, as Christ is thenew Adam bringing about the
(04:32):
redemption of the world from thefall that came through Adam and
Eve.
And so he's going to his motheras the one who's brought forth
him into this world and he'sworking his first sign we're
told in the Gospel of John.
So if you break down, I'm freshout of seminary says this comes
more closely to me from Yoannineliterature, the study of the
Gospel of John and his otherwritings.
(04:53):
There's the book of signs andthen there's the book of glory
later on, and so we're stillearly on the second chapter of
the Gospel of John.
We're seeing the first sign ofJesus working this miracle at
Cana, and he's revealing hisglory through the signs.
What's the greatest revelationof his glory Whenever his hour
has come?
We hear in the scriptures aswell.
(05:13):
So, his hour, of course, is hisdying for us on the cross, the
redemption of the entirety ofthe world, but he's bringing the
nations of Israel to himself byworking these signs, and so his
making here of wine from wateris that, and so he's, of course,
referring to Mary as as woman,relating to Eve.
Now, the cultural context ofthat of the time and this is
(05:36):
still true of a lot of Jewishcommunities that are more
conservative, as well as Islamiccommunities in the Middle East
you wouldn't necessarily callout one of your relatives names
in front of strangers.
Like I said, people wererelated, whether by marriage or
by blood.
Maybe that were at the weddingfeast of Cana, but that didn't
mean that Jesus would have knowneverybody exactly there, nor
(05:57):
that Jesus was exactly related.
He could have been passingthrough.
We don't know exactly why?
Jordan Whiteko (06:02):
Why do you think he was invited then?
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (06:03):
Well, one of the things reading into that
would be that he wanted to workone of his, his signs, but if he
had been known before, that iskind of growing up as the Christ
child.
You know maybe people that runinto him.
You want certain people at yourwedding that are exciting or
you meet, so it didn't have tonecessarily was like a celebrity
invited to the wedding.
He showed up, not necessarilyyet because he's he's early in
(06:24):
his ministry.
Okay, of course he would stickout more than somebody else, but
the point of calling woman inthat context is as if we were in
front of a bunch of strangers.
It was considered polite toactually not call your loved one
by their name, revealing theirname to somebody else, but
rather to call them by thegeneral context of woman, and so
it's actually a sign of respectthat Jesus is doing that in
(06:46):
front of potential strangers,with Mary.
Fr. Chris Pujol (06:48):
And that's the same reality with the Jewish
people and the way they contactGod and speak about God.
They never say his name becauseit's that close intimacy of love
between son and mother andFather.
Hamilton touched on theimportance of that wine and I
think it's so beautiful, and welook at how wines made that you
take many hundreds of thousandsof grapes right and they're
(07:09):
crushed down and they become one, and so what Jesus is doing
here is saying the old and thenew are coming together.
So you have grapes and wine,you have water.
You can almost see it as theold and the new, and now they're
coming together as one, whereyou have Jesus coming into this
new community.
They're meeting him and he'sstill giving himself fully, just
(07:30):
as the church.
Now, together, we all come andin that we're one in him.
And so that's why it's criticalthat the very first miracle has
to do with wine, because for usas Catholics, it points us
directly to what is to come inthe future with the Eucharist
you need a lot of wine too in anancient culture, because the
(07:50):
water isn't necessarilytrustworthy.
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (07:53):
So you'll see that they cut wine a lot of
the times with water so thatpeople are able to drink it.
So it's not as strong as itwould be, but it keeps at least
bacteria out of the water andthen people can enjoy that.
So maybe we're a dehydratedculture, but maybe we're having
a better time than we are.
Jordan Whiteko (08:09):
So we explained why Jesus would have made all
this wine.
It's a week-long party.
Essentially, it's just like thefact that the disciples were
invited.
You know they were stunned bythat, but then Jesus performed
this miracle.
So can you talk about how thebest wine was served at last?
Fr. Chris Pujol (08:25):
Well, there was wine the whole time, right, but
the significance is that thewine that was served after the
wine ran out the head waitersays was the better wine.
And he goes to the couple andsays wait and serve your best
wine last, because it tasted somuch richer and fuller.
Maybe we'd say it has bettertannins and it's aerated and
(08:49):
it's the best wine, father.
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (08:51):
Chris, can I butt in and?
Do something from our own lives.
Now, whenever you're kind ofout and you don't really have
like a great bottle of wine andyou want people to like think
well of your party and so forth,you've got to kind of disguise
it a little bit and so normallyyou would serve like your best
wine and if you didn't have alot in reserve or in stock then
it's like okay, people drank alittle bit.
At this point they're having agood time.
Fr. Chris Pujol (09:12):
Taste buds are on.
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (09:13):
They're not really worried about what wine
it is, as long as it keepsflowing and coming right.
So the wine can decrease overthe course of the night and
people don't realize like that.
There's a quality loss there.
So it's like bizarre and itwould be stunning to the
disciples that the best winewould have been served last
because it's almost wasting itin some sense on that.
But that's again a show of God'sabundance and that he's giving
(09:34):
us the absolute best of himselfpossible, and that that lines up
with the whole entire Christianscriptures, which is, jesus
doesn't just give us like partof himself for a little bit or,
you know, a grade C, somethinghe gives us grade A everything,
fully, utterly all of himself.
And that's what should stun usas actual disciples of Christ,
that God, the creator of theuniverse, would give all of that
(09:57):
to us, when he doesn't owe usany of it.
Right, we sinned, we're outsideof his grace.
He could just leave us as weare.
There's nothing on God in thatway, but rather he enters into
it and gives all of himself.
Fr. Chris Pujol (10:08):
And becomes one of us and that's stunning to
everything because it changesthe entire order of the universe
.
And that's what the disciples,in this first miracle, are
starting to see.
I mean, they would have beenstunned at the beginning.
They would have been stunnedwhen Mary said one of my
favorite lines in scriptures.
Everyone thinks of her saying Iam the handmaid of the Lord and
her beautiful fiat and givesher life over.
(10:29):
But here she says they have nowine.
And you could see almost thedisciples looking around like
what's Jesus's mother talkingabout?
Why is she getting involvedwith this?
Even Jesus says I can't reallyhelp you at first and then, like
any good son, he does what hismother asks and he enters into
(10:53):
humanity, as Father was sayingso beautifully and so perfectly.
And that would have made thedisciples stop and see that
something here is different,something here is changing and
this is where it's all startingto take root and from here it's
just going to completely blowtheir minds.
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (11:11):
And there's like a great reversal here if
you would look at like the storyof Adam and Eve again and Jesus
and Mary right.
So Eve brings what most peoplethink is the apple, probably a
fig, in a lot of the oldwritings of the ancient church
as well as in Judaism.
But this fruit, that's thistemptation to Adam and then
(11:34):
that's where they kind of fallfrom the grace of God through
that sin, both together.
Well, now you see the greatrole reversal, turn it around
that Mary as the new Eve isbringing the situation to Jesus
that needs fixed, and then hedoes so rather than not living
up to like, maybe like what his,his duty is in some sense, but
rather he fulfills it fully forthose and they enter into a joy
(11:57):
rather than into a sorrow.
Fr. Chris Pujol (11:58):
Or into a loss.
Yeah, because nothing's lost.
Here you have Jesus, the newAdam, Mary, the new Eve, new man
, new woman, and in thismarriage you see the joining of
that new life coming.
So up until this point,everything was lost.
Everything was offeringsacrifices so that they could
find God or somehow change God'sfavor, to be saved and enter
(12:22):
into the new land and the newcovenant.
And now it's actually happening.
And so for those firstfollowers of Christ, those
disciples would start to seetheir Jewish beliefs fulfilled,
transformed.
And that's stunning, becausethey're coming to see him not as
just a teacher or rabbi or aleader, but they're seeing him
as the Messiah in the completionof the Old Testament.
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (12:45):
Something about to stunned not necessarily
disciples, but just people thatwere there, people that are
maybe not yet disciples.
Think about all the servers ofthe banquet, like those that had
to get the wine.
Fr. Chris Pujol (12:56):
And fill the water jugs.
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (12:57):
Yeah, when you go to actual Canaan itself
and you go underneath the church, they have a not necessarily
the stone jar that was there,but it's representative of the
time and they're huge.
You don't move them, meaningthat you move yourself to go get
water.
I was a banquet server in myprevious life, you know, and one
of the things that you wouldhate to do is like have to like
scurry to get a bunch of stuffto try to make up for a loss
(13:18):
during the banquet itself.
Like you just feel like you'rejust trying to fill in a hole
that keeps like getting biggerand bigger, and that's in some
sense, what like those workerswould have had to do is they had
to go get multiple buckets ofwater and then bring it back so
that then Jesus could actuallymake that into wine.
So at first they would havebeen like why are we doing this?
Like what's the point?
of this in the midst of usrunning out of wine.
(13:39):
Shouldn't we be going to theneighbors or somewhere else to
try to find something, notbringing all this water into a
jar?
So they would have beenobviously shocked whenever it
became wine.
Fr. Chris Pujol (13:47):
And it's also interesting that the wine, that
those jugs would have beenemptied, right, because they're
for ceremony or washing and tobe present at this wedding, you
would have had to been rituallyclean, and so those jugs would
have been used to clean theutensils, the bowls, the spoons,
their hands themselves, so thateveryone could be together in
community and in worship andthen celebrate, and so all of
(14:09):
that water would have been usedup over that time period.
Those were big jars, right?
Yes, six of them, 20 to 30gallons each.
Jordan Whiteko (14:17):
That's a lot of wine for Jesus to make.
Did they drink that all?
Did they save some of it?
Would it be any good if theysaved it?
Fr. Chris Pujol (14:26):
Well, I'm sure that the Lord's wine is the best
vintage and the best.
It doesn't have soul fights andall these other things.
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (14:31):
Yeah, totally organic.
Fr. Chris Pujol (14:33):
But, go over very well today.
Jordan Whiteko (14:35):
Yeah, you can drink a bunch of it and still
feel fine tomorrow.
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (14:38):
No headache .
Yeah, there's a lot of wineJordan.
Fr. Chris Pujol (14:44):
I don't think they finished it all.
You don't think they finishedit all.
Jordan Whiteko (14:48):
I mean, it sounds like this party was wild.
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (14:49):
It was probably like a takeaway.
Keep safe.
They all took a little jug.
They took a little bit of it.
Fr. Chris Pujol (14:56):
They had fresh wine skins right For the new
wine skins, All right, and itwas a long journey back to
wherever they were going.
They had to stay hydrated.
Maybe Jesus took some alongwith them for the disciples on
their next as they continuedtheir journey.
Jordan Whiteko (15:11):
Vintage year one .
I know it's not year one atthat point.
Fr. Chris Pujol (15:15):
It goes back directly to that great abundance
, because they were never goingto go through all that wine at
that point.
But it shows us now that God'sgrace is like that wine it's
never ending, never failing, andwe can continue to draw into
those great sisters of His graceand love.
My cup of floweth over.
You're listening to the Catholic Accent Podcast.
In this podcast, we discuss theacts and miracles that Jesus
performed that stunned hisdisciples.
Today's topic is the weddingfeast of Cana.
I'm Jordan Waikko, along withFather Andrew Hamilton and
Father Christopher Poojol, andwe're both stunned.
It's so good to be with both ofyou today.
(00:20):
Why don't you set the scene forme?
What would a Jewish wedding ofthat time period in Galilee have
been like?
Fr. Chris Pujol (00:26):
Well, father Hamilton actually just came back
from the Holy Land, so we'lllet him set the stage, because
one of his favorite pastimes is,of course, going to weddings.
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (00:35):
It was so nice of you to let me set the
entire scene for us here.
Cana of Galilee right when yougo there now and modern Israel.
It's a much bigger place thanit would have been at the time,
but Cana would have just been asmall town that Jesus would have
been very close to, my guidesaid whenever I was in Israel
maybe like four to five hundredpeople.
The interesting part of that isthat it's such a small town
(00:57):
that back then, most people thatlived within a small town were
related to one another.
People have some sense of thisstill, Maybe if they come from a
smaller town in westernPennsylvania that you have a lot
of relatives.
I remember growing up in FordCity.
My parents are from Leechburg,my whole family was from
Leechburg and I wasn't relatedto anybody in Ford City High
School and that was like abizarre thing for people.
Everybody was like a cousin ofsomebody.
(01:17):
So you never, talk bad aboutanyone, right, don't burn your
bridges, but nonetheless, canaof Galilee, the old hospitality
laws at the time of Jesus, wouldhave necessitated that, if
anybody that was related throughmarriage by blood, whatever it
might be, you would be theninvited to the actual wedding
itself, and so my guide said,most likely almost the entirety
(01:38):
of the town of Cana would havebeen invited to the wedding of
whoever this mysterious couplewould have been.
Fr. Chris Pujol (01:44):
So that really would have been a great wedding.
I'm sure A lot of people.
Jordan Whiteko (01:48):
Yeah, but everybody.
You'd be related to everybody,so like you couldn't mingle you
know, jordan's looking for awife.
So did you happen to see awedding while you were there?
There was no weddings while Iwas there.
Do you know like do they stillpretty much invite the entire
town?
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (02:06):
I don't know about that, but in terms of
the church where this miraclewould have happened, that's
built on the ruins over time ofancient Israel, and then the
Crusader church and then now themodern church that's there and
one of the side chapels.
It's a tradition that basically, couples come there and they
renew their wedding vows, sopeople witness a wedding in that
sense, but more Christianmarriage than Jewish.
Jordan Whiteko (02:26):
Yeah, yeah, yeah .
So you talked about the miracle, and the disciples were at this
wedding party with Jesus andhis mother after just meeting
Jesus.
What do you think their firstimpression was when they were at
that wedding and they ran outof wine and Jesus was called to
act.
Fr. Chris Pujol (02:44):
Well, I think, first, the disciples would have
first been stunned by the factthat they went to the wedding,
right, because they weren't fromCana and they were passing
through, and yet they wentanyways, because Jesus knew this
couple, and the Blessed Motherwas there as well.
And I think, to see Mary's roleto begin with, that is, a woman
in that time period is the onewho's commanding her son to do
(03:06):
something and act, is a momentfor all of us to pause and see.
You know, running out of wineat a wedding, especially around
here, seems to be a commonreality, right, and we can go
get more because people enjoythemselves at weddings and
loosen up, but for them to runout here would be a great
disgrace, because it was alwaysthat the abundance of the wine
(03:29):
and of the food showed theabundance of the love of the
couple and of the familiescoming together.
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (03:34):
They knew how to party, in comparison to
us today.
Right, weddings weren't justlike one evening after an hour
in a church.
It was like a week week day, soyour preparations for that
wedding were immense.
Jordan Whiteko (03:44):
So that explains why it needed to be done.
They wanted the party to keepgoing, essentially.
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (03:49):
Absolutely Well.
It's an overabundance of God'sgrace which is then flowing from
that marriage which, even inancient Israel, judaism marriage
is the bedrock of societyunderstood, of course, go the
whole way back to Genesis, rightman, woman together.
It's bad that man is alone,which takes us into something
else within the actual storyitself, which is why does Jesus
(04:10):
call his mother woman?
It seems very odd, or maybeabrupt that he would do so, but
it's actually there's a twofoldnature to this, one being more
spiritual and then one cultural.
The spiritual would have beenhe's making reference the whole
way back to Eve.
So one of the titles that weknow the Blessed Virgin under is
the new Eve, as Christ is thenew Adam bringing about the
(04:32):
redemption of the world from thefall that came through Adam and
Eve.
And so he's going to his motheras the one who's brought forth
him into this world and he'sworking his first sign we're
told in the Gospel of John.
So if you break down, I'm freshout of seminary says this comes
more closely to me from Yoannineliterature, the study of the
Gospel of John and his otherwritings.
(04:53):
There's the book of signs andthen there's the book of glory
later on, and so we're stillearly on the second chapter of
the Gospel of John.
We're seeing the first sign ofJesus working this miracle at
Cana, and he's revealing hisglory through the signs.
What's the greatest revelationof his glory Whenever his hour
has come?
We hear in the scriptures aswell.
(05:13):
So, his hour, of course, is hisdying for us on the cross, the
redemption of the entirety ofthe world, but he's bringing the
nations of Israel to himself byworking these signs, and so his
making here of wine from wateris that, and so he's, of course,
referring to Mary as as woman,relating to Eve.
Now, the cultural context ofthat of the time and this is
(05:36):
still true of a lot of Jewishcommunities that are more
conservative, as well as Islamiccommunities in the Middle East
you wouldn't necessarily callout one of your relatives names
in front of strangers.
Like I said, people wererelated, whether by marriage or
by blood.
Maybe that were at the weddingfeast of Cana, but that didn't
mean that Jesus would have knowneverybody exactly there, nor
(05:57):
that Jesus was exactly related.
He could have been passingthrough.
We don't know exactly why?
Jordan Whiteko (06:02):
Why do you think he was invited then?
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (06:03):
Well, one of the things reading into that
would be that he wanted to workone of his, his signs, but if he
had been known before, that iskind of growing up as the Christ
child.
You know maybe people that runinto him.
You want certain people at yourwedding that are exciting or
you meet, so it didn't have tonecessarily was like a celebrity
invited to the wedding.
He showed up, not necessarilyyet because he's he's early in
(06:24):
his ministry.
Okay, of course he would stickout more than somebody else, but
the point of calling woman inthat context is as if we were in
front of a bunch of strangers.
It was considered polite toactually not call your loved one
by their name, revealing theirname to somebody else, but
rather to call them by thegeneral context of woman, and so
it's actually a sign of respectthat Jesus is doing that in
(06:46):
front of potential strangers,with Mary.
Fr. Chris Pujol (06:48):
And that's the same reality with the Jewish
people and the way they contactGod and speak about God.
They never say his name becauseit's that close intimacy of love
between son and mother andFather.
Hamilton touched on theimportance of that wine and I
think it's so beautiful, and welook at how wines made that you
take many hundreds of thousandsof grapes right and they're
(07:09):
crushed down and they become one, and so what Jesus is doing
here is saying the old and thenew are coming together.
So you have grapes and wine,you have water.
You can almost see it as theold and the new, and now they're
coming together as one, whereyou have Jesus coming into this
new community.
They're meeting him and he'sstill giving himself fully, just
(07:30):
as the church.
Now, together, we all come andin that we're one in him.
And so that's why it's criticalthat the very first miracle has
to do with wine, because for usas Catholics, it points us
directly to what is to come inthe future with the Eucharist
you need a lot of wine too in anancient culture, because the
(07:50):
water isn't necessarilytrustworthy.
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (07:53):
So you'll see that they cut wine a lot of
the times with water so thatpeople are able to drink it.
So it's not as strong as itwould be, but it keeps at least
bacteria out of the water andthen people can enjoy that.
So maybe we're a dehydratedculture, but maybe we're having
a better time than we are.
Jordan Whiteko (08:09):
So we explained why Jesus would have made all
this wine.
It's a week-long party.
Essentially, it's just like thefact that the disciples were
invited.
You know they were stunned bythat, but then Jesus performed
this miracle.
So can you talk about how thebest wine was served at last?
Fr. Chris Pujol (08:25):
Well, there was wine the whole time, right, but
the significance is that thewine that was served after the
wine ran out the head waitersays was the better wine.
And he goes to the couple andsays wait and serve your best
wine last, because it tasted somuch richer and fuller.
Maybe we'd say it has bettertannins and it's aerated and
(08:49):
it's the best wine, father.
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (08:51):
Chris, can I butt in and?
Do something from our own lives.
Now, whenever you're kind ofout and you don't really have
like a great bottle of wine andyou want people to like think
well of your party and so forth,you've got to kind of disguise
it a little bit and so normallyyou would serve like your best
wine and if you didn't have alot in reserve or in stock then
it's like okay, people drank alittle bit.
At this point they're having agood time.
Fr. Chris Pujol (09:12):
Taste buds are on.
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (09:13):
They're not really worried about what wine
it is, as long as it keepsflowing and coming right.
So the wine can decrease overthe course of the night and
people don't realize like that.
There's a quality loss there.
So it's like bizarre and itwould be stunning to the
disciples that the best winewould have been served last
because it's almost wasting itin some sense on that.
But that's again a show of God'sabundance and that he's giving
(09:34):
us the absolute best of himselfpossible, and that that lines up
with the whole entire Christianscriptures, which is, jesus
doesn't just give us like partof himself for a little bit or,
you know, a grade C, somethinghe gives us grade A everything,
fully, utterly all of himself.
And that's what should stun usas actual disciples of Christ,
that God, the creator of theuniverse, would give all of that
(09:57):
to us, when he doesn't owe usany of it.
Right, we sinned, we're outsideof his grace.
He could just leave us as weare.
There's nothing on God in thatway, but rather he enters into
it and gives all of himself.
Fr. Chris Pujol (10:08):
And becomes one of us and that's stunning to
everything because it changesthe entire order of the universe
.
And that's what the disciples,in this first miracle, are
starting to see.
I mean, they would have beenstunned at the beginning.
They would have been stunnedwhen Mary said one of my
favorite lines in scriptures.
Everyone thinks of her saying Iam the handmaid of the Lord and
her beautiful fiat and givesher life over.
(10:29):
But here she says they have nowine.
And you could see almost thedisciples looking around like
what's Jesus's mother talkingabout?
Why is she getting involvedwith this?
Even Jesus says I can't reallyhelp you at first and then, like
any good son, he does what hismother asks and he enters into
(10:53):
humanity, as Father was sayingso beautifully and so perfectly.
And that would have made thedisciples stop and see that
something here is different,something here is changing and
this is where it's all startingto take root and from here it's
just going to completely blowtheir minds.
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (11:11):
And there's like a great reversal here if
you would look at like the storyof Adam and Eve again and Jesus
and Mary right.
So Eve brings what most peoplethink is the apple, probably a
fig, in a lot of the oldwritings of the ancient church
as well as in Judaism.
But this fruit, that's thistemptation to Adam and then
(11:34):
that's where they kind of fallfrom the grace of God through
that sin, both together.
Well, now you see the greatrole reversal, turn it around
that Mary as the new Eve isbringing the situation to Jesus
that needs fixed, and then hedoes so rather than not living
up to like, maybe like what his,his duty is in some sense, but
rather he fulfills it fully forthose and they enter into a joy
(11:57):
rather than into a sorrow.
Fr. Chris Pujol (11:58):
Or into a loss.
Yeah, because nothing's lost.
Here you have Jesus, the newAdam, Mary, the new Eve, new man
, new woman, and in thismarriage you see the joining of
that new life coming.
So up until this point,everything was lost.
Everything was offeringsacrifices so that they could
find God or somehow change God'sfavor, to be saved and enter
(12:22):
into the new land and the newcovenant.
And now it's actually happening.
And so for those firstfollowers of Christ, those
disciples would start to seetheir Jewish beliefs fulfilled,
transformed.
And that's stunning, becausethey're coming to see him not as
just a teacher or rabbi or aleader, but they're seeing him
as the Messiah in the completionof the Old Testament.
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (12:45):
Something about to stunned not necessarily
disciples, but just people thatwere there, people that are
maybe not yet disciples.
Think about all the servers ofthe banquet, like those that had
to get the wine.
Fr. Chris Pujol (12:56):
And fill the water jugs.
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (12:57):
Yeah, when you go to actual Canaan itself
and you go underneath the church, they have a not necessarily
the stone jar that was there,but it's representative of the
time and they're huge.
You don't move them, meaningthat you move yourself to go get
water.
I was a banquet server in myprevious life, you know, and one
of the things that you wouldhate to do is like have to like
scurry to get a bunch of stuffto try to make up for a loss
(13:18):
during the banquet itself.
Like you just feel like you'rejust trying to fill in a hole
that keeps like getting biggerand bigger, and that's in some
sense, what like those workerswould have had to do is they had
to go get multiple buckets ofwater and then bring it back so
that then Jesus could actuallymake that into wine.
So at first they would havebeen like why are we doing this?
Like what's the point?
of this in the midst of usrunning out of wine.
(13:39):
Shouldn't we be going to theneighbors or somewhere else to
try to find something, notbringing all this water into a
jar?
So they would have beenobviously shocked whenever it
became wine.
Fr. Chris Pujol (13:47):
And it's also interesting that the wine, that
those jugs would have beenemptied, right, because they're
for ceremony or washing and tobe present at this wedding, you
would have had to been rituallyclean, and so those jugs would
have been used to clean theutensils, the bowls, the spoons,
their hands themselves, so thateveryone could be together in
community and in worship andthen celebrate, and so all of
(14:09):
that water would have been usedup over that time period.
Those were big jars, right?
Yes, six of them, 20 to 30gallons each.
Jordan Whiteko (14:17):
That's a lot of wine for Jesus to make.
Did they drink that all?
Did they save some of it?
Would it be any good if theysaved it?
Fr. Chris Pujol (14:26):
Well, I'm sure that the Lord's wine is the best
vintage and the best.
It doesn't have soul fights andall these other things.
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (14:31):
Yeah, totally organic.
Fr. Chris Pujol (14:33):
But, go over very well today.
Jordan Whiteko (14:35):
Yeah, you can drink a bunch of it and still
feel fine tomorrow.
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (14:38):
No headache .
Yeah, there's a lot of wineJordan.
Fr. Chris Pujol (14:44):
I don't think they finished it all.
You don't think they finishedit all.
Jordan Whiteko (14:48):
I mean, it sounds like this party was wild.
Fr. Andrew Hamilton (14:49):
It was probably like a takeaway.
Keep safe.
They all took a little jug.
They took a little bit of it.
Fr. Chris Pujol (14:56):
They had fresh wine skins right For the new
wine skins, All right, and itwas a long journey back to
wherever they were going.
They had to stay hydrated.
Maybe Jesus took some alongwith them for the disciples on
their next as they continuedtheir journey.
Jordan Whiteko (15:11):
Vintage year one .
I know it's not year one atthat point.
Fr. Chris Pujol (15:15):
It goes back directly to that great abundance
, because they were never goingto go through all that wine at
that point.
But it shows us now that God'sgrace is like that wine it's
never ending, never failing, andwe can continue to draw into
those great sisters of His graceand love.
My cup of floweth over.
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