From Sister Gabrielle Lepage, Missionary Sister of Our Lady of Africa
The first sign of Jesus Christ speaks volumes: the wedding feast at Cana. The wedding feast is a symbol of celebration, joy, togetherness and covenant. It is a happy God who gives us the pleasure of existing and being happy. There is a symbolic meaning to this first sign. Jesus goes to a wedding ceremony. The union he consecrates between the man and the woman is the figure of the union that God wanted to establish between Himself and the soul of each human being. In this first sign that Jesus gave, there is happiness, and it’s the same for his first teaching:
Blessed are the poor in heart…, Blessed are those persecuted for the sake of justice…, etc.
When we think of the wedding, we think of love, love that is the fire that warms us when our heart is cold, love that is the door that invites us to come out of ourselves. We might sometimes wonder why there are so many people living their faith as if in an inner prison, in structures that they themselves have put in place, crushed by a sense of guilt because of past mistakes, thus massacring the image of the God of Jesus Christ?
Jesus came to open the doors of our prisons!
Yes, Jesus told us over and over again that God is love! What is fundamental to the Christian life is the shocking and revolutionary discovery that the good Lord loved me first, that he loves me personally and freely, that he loves me as I am today.
‘And we have recognised and believed in God’s love for us’. (1st John 4:16)
Once I discover the deep love that God has for me, that God has for each of us, it explains why I believe, why I hope, why I have a reason to live today. It makes me free inside, it makes me confident, it gives me breath, it makes me happy inside whatever the storms outside. Once you’ve grasped that, everything else becomes relative.
This God the Father, of whom I am the son, the daughter (filial spirit) and the brother, the sister of all (fraternal spirit), invites me to develop the family spirit, this global, universal dimension.
‘Love one another as I have loved you’ (John 15:12).
‘They have no more wine’, said Mary, the Mother of Mercy, understanding the mysterious meaning of her Son’s response, she turned to the servants and said: “Do whatever He tells you”, and the rest is history.
Jesus did not come to offer water, because water is the ordinary stuff of life, it’s good, but he wanted our lives to be good wine. We need new wine if we are to bear witness to the joy of Jesus Christ. To be joyful, we need to be filled with hope.
‘Don’t let your hope be stolen, above all don’t let your hope be stolen’, Pope François often tells us.
As Frédéric Lenoir says, he knows how to express himself with incredible directness. Jesus Christ comes to bring us this joy, this new wine. We mustn’t be content with a glass of water.
The world needs new wine to live on another level!
