John 2:11Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

How then did He manifest His glory? He manifested it from His side. If not then, all later had to hear of this miracle, since it is glorified to this day and has not been forgotten.

That not everyone learned of it on that day is clear from what follows. After saying, "He manifested His glory," the Evangelist adds, "and His disciples believed in Him," that is, those who had already marveled at Him before.

Do you see that it was especially necessary to work signs when honest people were present and attentive to events? Such people could believe more readily and pay greater attention to what happened.

And how could He have been known without signs? Teaching and prophecy, joined with miracles, can dispose the souls of hearers to attend earnestly to events, once the soul has already been prepared for this.

For this reason the Evangelists often say that in some places He did not perform signs because of the perverse disposition of the people living there.

Many miracles, at first little known in detail, became better known over time. They were told in all their details by those who had been eyewitnesses from the beginning.

Still, let us not dispute whether this was the first miracle or another. How did He manifest His glory? Few were present at this event, and it was not performed before the people.

Yet if not then, afterward all had to hear of this miracle. It is proclaimed even to this day and has not remained unknown.

Understand the words, "His disciples believed in Him," to mean that they acquired a greater and stronger faith in Him. They certainly believed before, but they did not believe so firmly.

It was entirely natural for Jesus Christ to wait until the age of full maturity, so that all that occurred might not seem an apparition.

If very many supposed this even when Jesus Christ worked miracles at a completely mature age, how much more would they have done so in an immature age.

Moreover, eaten up with envy, they would have raised Him on the cross sooner than was fitting. Thus they might not only have disbelieved the mystery of the Incarnation, but also hindered the preaching of the Gospel.

Find also in the third chapter of Matthew's Gospel (Mt 3:1) the place where it is said, "In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea."

There you will find sound reasons why Jesus Christ came to be baptized at thirty years of age.

"And He manifested His glory..." That is, His power, His majesty, and the greatness of His Godhead.

How could this be, when only a few paid attention to what happened: the servants, the architriclinus, the bridegroom, and His disciples?

So far as it depended on Jesus Christ, He manifested His glory through this miracle. If not many noticed it then, afterward this miracle was made known and drew many.

That no one else believed on that very day is clear from the Evangelist's addition: "And His disciples believed in Him." Even before this miracle they had marveled at Him.

Observe, then, that miracles should occur when the spectators are well disposed and attentive.

Therefore Christ Himself did not reveal what had happened to everyone, but only to the one who could understand it better than others. He left the more exact knowledge of the miracle to a later time, after other miracles had been performed.

Then it had to become trustworthy. For that He changed the water into wine, He had the servants as witnesses. That the wine was good, He had the steward of the feast and the bridegroom as witnesses (St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of John, 22).

Even if the steward of the feast used the expression, "when they have drunk freely," one still cannot conclude that the guests were drunk. He was speaking only of the existing custom of not keeping the good wine until the end of the feast, but serving it at the beginning.

Moreover, the Jews were distinguished by moderation in the use of wine, and becoming drunk was considered improper among them. Wine was mostly drunk with water. The family celebrating the wedding was poor and did not have an abundance of wine.

Nor would Jesus Christ have taken part in such a celebration where there were, or could have been, drunken people.

The Evangelist says that by the miracle in Cana Jesus made a beginning of miracles. Therefore the miracle performed in Cana was the first in the series of miracles. Consequently, before this Jesus had not manifested His divine power before men.

Even if the miracle now performed remained unnoticed for the time by the guests, the steward, and the bridegroom, it could not have gone unnoticed by Jesus' disciples. They had fixed all their attention on Him and on His actions.

The Evangelist assures us of this when he says, "and His disciples believed in Him."

With Jesus' return to Galilee, His messianic ministry begins.

His disciples believed in Him: this does not mean that the disciples had not believed in the Lord before. It indicates only a higher degree of faith than before, to which they now rose after seeing such an astonishing miracle.

Previously their faith rested only on John's testimony and on the impression made upon them by the Lord at their first meeting with Him. Now they saw with their own eyes that He possessed almighty power.

Their faith in Him increased, was strengthened, and was confirmed.

"Understand the words, 'His disciples believed in Him,' to mean that they acquired a greater and stronger faith in Him. They certainly believed before, but they did not believe so firmly" (Theophylact).

"The disciples believed" means that they were confirmed in faith, having believed before (Jn 1:42, 46, 50). Thus the eyewitness Evangelist and the eyewitness apostles recognized the event at Cana as a true miracle.

Was it necessary, they say, to work a miracle here? Compassion could have helped the need without a miracle.

But unfortunately for the neologists, the Evangelist shows that Jesus helped in need not merely to display His humanity. He did so chiefly to awaken faith in those who lacked it, and to strengthen it in those in whom it was still weak.

Christ Jesus is the herald of the heavenly Father's will concerning the salvation of men, not a preacher of humanitarianism alone.

That is, in this miracle Christ visibly expressed the truth that He came to renew man. He came to regenerate us for the life of the new man, wholly different from the life of the old man.

Each of us receives that old life through natural birth, with inherited sinful corruption passing from Adam to all his descendants.

The old man and the new man do not differ at all by nature. Both have the same bodily constitution, the same outward senses, and the same soul endowed with reason, free will, and the capacity to feel pleasure and pain, love and hatred.

Yet when the life of the one and the other is compared more closely, a striking difference appears. The old man lives only for earth and for himself.

The new man, while living on earth, sighs for heaven and thinks on spiritual things. He prefers the joy of communion with God, in His holy word, in prayer, and in the Mysteries, to everything in the world.

He strives to bring his will into agreement with the will of God. In his deeds he is guided not by self-love, but by zeal for the glory of God and love for his neighbors.

The Lord Jesus has called us precisely to this life of the new man. He came to produce in us this change in our spiritual nature in all its aspects.

For this purpose, a miracle of God's grace must be wrought upon it, like the miracle of changing water into wine.

The whole account of Christ the Savior's visit to the wedding in Cana is not without deep spiritual meaning. First, by His presence at the marriage feast, He sanctified and blessed the conjugal union and the family state in general.

Blessed is celibacy, when those able to receive the unmarried life voluntarily take its vow upon themselves. They do so for greater freedom in serving God and for greater progress in the spiritual life.

The Lord Jesus Himself sanctified this way of life by His own example. Yet He also showed His favor toward married life, deeming the wedding in Cana worthy of His visit.

As the Creator's first act after creating man was to bless him to be fruitful and multiply, so one of the first acts of the Renewer of mankind was to sanctify married life.

Thus the members of a family might also be members of His Church, and the children of natural parents might also be children of God by grace.

Second, at the wedding in Cana of Galilee, Christ condescended to earthly joys and consolations. He even Himself assisted the gladness of the guests, preparing for them, by the power of His omnipotence, wine that gladdens the heart of man.

Such is the spirit of the Gospel teaching in general. It rises up against attachment to earthly pleasures that reaches forgetfulness of God. It opposes a distracted and crudely sensual life.

Yet it is by no means against innocent and quiet earthly joys. But under what conditions can our earthly joys be innocent? Under the same conditions as the gladness of the guests at the wedding in Cana of Galilee was innocent.

Christ's presence among them restrained them from excess in eating and drinking, and from immodest words and movements.

Likewise, our earthly joys will be pure and innocent if we choose them with the thought of Christ. Before allowing ourselves to take part in one amusement or another, we should ask whether it involves violating a commandment of Christ or the Church.

We should ask whether it is timely. For example, is it timely to arrange and attend entertainments on the eve of Sundays and feast days?

And we should sanctify lawful joys permitted to a Christian by the remembrance of Christ. By that remembrance we should restrain ourselves from sinful dissipation.

According to the prediction of Christ the Savior, His second coming will find men unready to meet Him. Then, as in the days before the flood, people will be eating, drinking, marrying, and being given in marriage (Mt 24:38-39).

The misfortune is not that people will eat, drink, and celebrate weddings. It is that, though Christians, they will do all this in forgetfulness of Christ, of their Christian calling, and of their eternal destiny.

They will do it with the carelessness of those before the flood, and perhaps with mockery of warnings against such carelessness.

Is it surprising if, for such careless Christians who are strangers to the fear of God, the second coming of Christ will be as destructive as the flood was for the contemporaries of Noah?

Whoever does not willingly remember Christ, and does not temper his inclination toward earthly pleasures by thinking of Him, will be made to remember Him unwillingly as the strict Judge.

Here one cannot help recalling, with bitter regret, the unchristian character of wedding celebrations in many Christian families.

One cannot but call impious the custom of holding balls after the crowning, with drinking, card playing, and immodest dances. The newlyweds themselves usually take part in these dances.

They do not consider how improper such amusement is after the great Mystery has been performed over them, by which their conjugal union has been sanctified.

Third, Jesus Christ did not immediately fulfill the desire of His most pure Mother concerning help at the wedding in Cana of Galilee. He told Her that His hour had not yet come.

If He so responded to the desire of a Being most pure and most holy, is it any wonder if He sometimes acts likewise toward us sinners when we ask Him for help?

As we make Him wait long for our repentance and conversion, so He does not always quickly heed our prayers to Him, or the prayers of others for us.

He wants us not only to nourish a humble sense of dependence on Him and to turn to Him with hope in prayer for help. He also wants us to learn patience in prayer and surrender to His holy will.

He wants us to become accustomed to loving Him not only when He shows clear signs of His favor toward us, but also when He seems to turn His face away from us.

We ourselves are not always ready to receive from God the mercy for which we ask Him. Rain is useful for the soil not when it has not yet been freed from snow and ice, but when it has been warmed by the sun's rays.

Likewise, the goodness of God finds sufficient receptivity only in hearts warmed by love for God.

Fourth, the steward of the feast at the wedding in Cana of Galilee said that guests are first served good wine, and when they have drunk freely, then inferior wine is served.

Is this not an image of the fate of those who love the world? As long as they have something to live on, the world gives them a full cup of its comforts and joys.

It surrounds them with flatterers and admirers. It clouds their heads with praise of their supposed merits, both of soul and body.

Yet it ends with the lover of the world either becoming sated and falling from satiety into boredom and despair, or falling into poverty through extravagance.

In that poverty his supposed friends abandon him. They valued not him, but his hospitality.

Like the prodigal son in the parable, brought to the necessity of feeding on swine's food, he drinks to death the bitter cup of every deprivation.

And it is still well if this poverty and grief turn him, like the prodigal son, to repentance and through repentance lead him to the Lord.

But it also happens that lovers of the world, abandoned by the world and deprived of human sympathy, do not seek consolation in God, and so they die.

Truly, after sweet and costly wine, they must drink only what is bitter and worthless.

Thus the world acts toward its pitiable worshipers. But Christ, the Bridegroom of the Church, does not act so toward souls betrothed to Him.

The more devoted they are to Him, the more they must drink from the cup of sorrows. The more crosses they must bear in the struggle against temptations from the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Yet as He Himself reached glory by the way of the cross, so glorification is prepared in the heavens, in the Kingdom of Heaven, for His followers who share with Him the sufferings of this present life.

There He promised to drink with them the new wine of eternal joy, which never diminishes (Mk 14:25).