The Changing of Wine

The marriage begins with champagne on the magical evening of the wedding reception.

But over time, the wine changes.

It becomes a much cheaper vintage as spouses struggle to build a home together. It is replaced by formulas and juice boxes and medicines as they raise their children. With every milestone, with every crisis, the vintage is patience and forgiveness; with every check written to cover the mortgage, insurance and tuition, selflessness and generosity are the spirits shared in chipped glasses.

The wine tastes sweeter with grandchildren and the opportunities to help a new family get started.

The wine becomes increasingly bitter and hard with the visits to the doctor, the long wait for test results, the necessary changes in lifestyle, the round-the-clock care. And eventually they sip their last glass together until they find places next to each other at the wedding banquet of heaven.

In marriages where Christ is the always-welcomed Wedding Guest, the wine of compassion and understanding, of humble love and generous grace, never runs out. The wine served at the marriage feast – a feast that continues over many years from the banquet table to the family dinner table to the workbench to the play table to the quiet table for two – is always “new” and richer and sweeter with every glass poured and shared.

The love of God is manifested at its most powerful in the love between husband and wife: in marriages in which spouses have navigated together life’s hard road of fear, disappointment, heartache and illness; in marriages that are living sacraments of God’s presence in our midst; in marriages in which Christ is the unseen but always-present Wedding Guest. Throughout Scripture, God speaks of his love for humanity in terms of espousal. Christ, who performed his first miracle at a wedding, called himself “the Bridegroom” who comes to bring his people to the wedding feast of the Father. As ministers of the marriage sacrament, husbands and wives, in their love for one another, help all of us to realize the great love of God the Father and Christ his Son, the Bridegroom. [Connections January 2010]

Quote:

In John’s Gospel, Christ works his first sign by creating wine. Not that Jesus sought to turn faith into an ongoing party – far from it – but in the miracle at Cana, Jesus offers for the first time the “new wine” of hope restored and reconciliation renewed. It is a sign that should dramatically alter our perspective of God from one of fear to one of heartening and transforming joy, from one of distant coldness to one of promised welcome, from one of resignation in the wake of life’s hurts and disappointment to one of gratitude to God for the gift of life itself. This “new wine” of the Messiah’s coming is centered in a vision of faith that sees God as Father of all; that enables us to rebuild our world in God’s justice and compassion; that heals alienation and estrangement through forgiveness and reconciliation; that transforms distrust and despair through Christ’s spirit of humble selflessness. [Connections, January 2004]