Sometimes played down or neglected, the miracle at the marriage feast at Cana is rich in signs and symbols that anticipate the Last Supper and the Passion of Jesus.

This week we celebrated the feast of Corpus Christi, now rather cumbersomely renamed (for the sake of those who were never taught Latin) “The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ”. The most explicit eucharistic teaching is found in the Fourth Gospel on the day following the Miraculous Feeding: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” But whereas that miracle had been to provide a huge quantity of bread – the fragments left over from five barley loaves filled 12 baskets – the miracle providing a huge quantity of wine had come earlier, at Cana. And a huge quantity it certainly was, for there were six stone water jars, each holding 20 or 30 gallons, and all were “filled to the brim”. That implies 120 to 180 gallons of wine, enough to make any Christian of a puritanical disposition feel very uncomfortable indeed.

And uncomfortable they were: the German New Testament scholar and Lutheran theologian Martin Hengel admitted that “this miracle story continues to be something of an offence to us exegetes”. Rudolf Bultmann suggested the story might have been derived from the cult of Dionysus. Catholics, fortunately, have never been puritans.

For my part, I love the idea that Jesus’ mother Mariam (to use the original form of her New Testament name) was such a party girl as to have thought it important not to run out of wine. Rejoice Mariam! The poor, whose daily life can be so drab, always put extra resources into celebrations, with decorations, dancing, and with food and drink.

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