John describes the event at Cana as Jesus’ first miracle, and gives us some clues to its meaning. For example the six stone water jars. They were used by the Jews for rites of purification, but for John, the mystic, they symbolise fallen human nature in need of purifying; they stand for the old creation that emerged out of the dark waters of chaos. But the Evangelist has set this wedding feast on the seventh day of the new creation where Christ is the Light shining in the darkness. His mother, introduced now as Woman, Eve of the new creation, is destined to become the Mother of all the living when she appears again at the end of his gospel. So we have, Christ the Light, His mother the Woman, and water.

What is John telling us? In the previous chapter of his gospel he spoke of John the baptiser as one who baptised with water, but indicated that the one to come, Jesus, will baptise with the Holy Spirit. In this miracle water is transformed into wine, sparkling, heady, inebriating wine, symbol of the Spirit – the Spirit who would change our broken humanity into a new creation, into the wine that will take us out of our darkness, our loneliness, our alienation and anxiety.

Human nature, our human nature, is then truly transformed – not replaced – just as the water was not replaced - so we remain who we are with our personal history and characteristics, all our quirks and peculiarities, but we are transformed into the Spirit. We live NOW, in this moment where the future meets the present, IN Christ. And Mary, the mother, is the one who with total confidence does her work, indicating our needs to Jesus and telling us what to do.

This new creation calls for great faith. We are faced with enormous tragedies in our world today where so many are suffering, deprived of the basic necessities of life; where there is oppression, violence, huge injustice - and we seem to be doing our best to destroy all that is good and life-giving on the planet. Being a woman of small faith I’m afraid that too often I feel helpless. I have to struggle to reconcile these difficult situations with the new creation. We really seem at times to have very little wine. I have to remind myself that if I am relying on the old stale water of my unredeemed nature, then that’s all I will have to offer to others – a small amount of rather polluted water. But the wedding feast of Cana invites me, all of us, to keep looking beyond our fragility: to live our faith and to drink this new wine, to allow it to do its work in us so that we are changed and become channels through which it can flow, to share it freely with each other and to become ‘soberly intoxicated’ as somebody has said, with the energy of the Spirit which cannot be contained in a bottle nor in a particular structure. It is free, and it needs freedom in me, in us, to be creative and reach out in the service of love.

And I have to remember this was not just a litre or two of wine – it was a huge amount and of the best! John is telling us that transformation is not a miserly affair, something doled out sparingly drop by drop, as we, with our limited perceptions, might expect. No! God is unimaginably generous, meeting needs way beyond those of our present situation. This is about transforming us and our world now by sheer divine grace and generosity. To live in Christ, the Light in the darkness, is to live in that energising presence which transforms us and our world now and into eternity. It is to believe against all odds that the Spirit is at work in every present moment of our lives, in our world, in every one of us. It is to look within our ordinary everyday experiences and find the timeless, eternal presence. It is to live in Hope.

And the miracle implies that this new wine, so abundant, will never run out - it is only the first of the signs of his glory which Jesus accomplished. This Eucharist which we are about to celebrate, and our presence here together is another.

The wedding in Cana is above all else a celebration of love and we are invited to be participants, not spectators, for the sake of our world so much in need of human kindness, of solidarity, of selflessness and generosity, the gifts of God.

This is the belief and the love which Paul in our first reading today from his letter to the Philippians, expresses so vividly – ‘all of you share in God’s grace’, the new life of the Spirit. He is confident that the one who began the good work in us will bring it to completion so that our love may overflow more and more, with knowledge and full insight to help us determine what is best.

And this is surely the love that animated those first Roman martyrs and countless others after them. Today we remember the 150^th anniversary of the death of Jeanne-Marie Chavoin, our foundress, and we celebrate her life and the legacy she left us. She too heard the words of Mary: They have no wine, and she sought all her life to give them wine – at Coutouvre, in Cerdon, Belley and beyond. She lived Mary’s words to the servants: Do whatever He tells you. Listen to His voice, look within, and learn how to determine what is best and so produce the harvest. She was a woman of prayer even when it was hard to pray, when she felt God’s and Mary’s absence rather than their presence. Throughout her life, in times of joy, and in those difficult years in Belley before her resignation, in Meximieux where she felt cut off from the activities of her beloved Congregation, and finally in Jarnosse, the village in desperate need, where she was in desperate need, she was always a woman who was concerned for others, a woman who prayed, a woman who shared generously the life-giving wine of the Spirit with those around her.