Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
On today's Feast of Our Lady, the Feast of the Miraculous Medal, we heard the passage from the Gospel of St. John, Chapter 2, the miracle at the wedding feast of Cana, the first public miracle that our Lord actually performed.
There are a number of indications that the Apostle John wrote his Gospel with another book of the Scriptures in mind, particularly the book of Genesis.
This is evident at the start of his Gospel when he writes, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through him.
It's John 1, verses 1 through 3.
This closely resembles the first book of the Scripture.
We read, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, Genesis 1:1.
The book of Genesis opens by speaking of different days of creation, from the first day when God created the heavens and the earth to the last day, the seventh day, when God rested from all the work that he had done.
Also, St. John opens his Gospel speaking of different days.
The counting of days in St. John's Gospel begins at the start of Jesus' public ministry, when John the Baptist testified that Jesus was the Son of God, and then Jesus began to call his first disciples.
Then we arrive at what we heard in the Gospel today.
On the third day, there was a wedding in Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there, John 2, verse 1.
So in St. John's Gospel, Jesus is not only presented as being equal to the Creator, but he's actually presented as entering into his creation, as physically entering into time, space, matter, by taking flesh.
And the beginning of his public ministry is presented as a new day for all of creation.
There's at least one other parallel between St. John's Gospel and the book of Genesis.
In the first chapters of Genesis, we hear of the creation of Adam and Eve, their disobedience to God's command, and the promise by God to crush the head of the serpent, Satan, by the woman and her offspring.
Already in the letters of St. Paul, which were written maybe 30 years before the Gospel of St. John, already in St. Paul's letters, Christ is referred to as the new Adam.
In Romans 5, verse 14, he writes, Death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the sin of Adam, who was a type of the one to come.
And in 1 Corinthians 15:22, we hear, For as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.
And a little later on, verse 45, he says, Thus it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living being.
The last, Adam, meaning Christ, became a life-giving spirit.
This idea of Jesus Christ as the new Adam is clear in the mind of St. John when he writes his Gospel at the end of the first century, but he wants to help complete the picture, and that's where Our Lady comes in.
They have no wine, she says to our Lord in the wedding feast today.
First of all, this is a beautiful example of Our Lady's perfect love of neighbor.
Our Lady focuses on the needs of those around her, not on their faults.
If it were us, we might be tempted to start thinking about critical and maybe uncharitable thoughts, or perhaps even just complaining about the couple, or maybe even the head waiter for not being as attentive as they should have been.
Why did they invite all these people here?
How could they have run out of wine already?
This is very irresponsible of them.
But with Our Lady, there's none of that.
Our Lady responds by looking on the situation and on the difficulty with eyes of mercy, and with a heart of mercy, and simply trying to see how she can be of help.
Good lesson for us.
Our Lady focuses on the need, not on the fault.
And in order to help them, she turns to the perfect need meter, the one who St. John, at the beginning of his gospel, already told us was the creator of heaven and earth, the word incarnate Jesus Christ, her son.
But notice our Lord's reply. He says, woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come. John 2 verse 4.
A better translation of that verse reads like this, woman, what concern is that to you and to me? As if to say, what does that have to do with our mission? It's more literally what he says.
The implication is that our Lord would not have performed his first miracle if Our Lady hadn't stepped in and asked him to do something, and then given the instructions to the servants, do whatever he tells you. John 2 verse 5.
Calling his mother woman brings us back again to the book of Genesis, where Adam, after first seeing Eve, says, this is at last bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called woman, Genesis 2:23.
And that woman in Genesis, later named Eve, was created for Adam by God after God had said, it's not good that the man should be alone. I'll make him a helper as his partner. Read that in Genesis 2:18. So Eve, who was supposed to be the helper and partner of Adam, instead caused Adam to sin against God.
In Our Lady, Eve actually finds her fulfillment, we could say. That's essentially what St. John is pointing to us in his gospel. The true helper, the true partner alongside the true Adam. Our Lady is the new Eve alongside the new Adam.
The fact that this is true is confirmed in St. John's gospel towards the end in the 19th chapter, when our Lord from the cross addressing his mother says, woman, behold your son, in reference to the evangelist, John 19 verse 26.
At the beginning of our Lord's public ministry, Our Lady at Cana demonstrated her perfect love for her neighbor.
Then at the foot of the cross, she demonstrated her perfect love towards God. Suffering alongside of her son, the God-man, and offering those sufferings to the Father.
And from all her immense sufferings, Our Lady was rewarded with the gift of children, spiritual children, first of all, St. John.
Again, this recalls the book of Genesis, where God said to the woman, in pain you shall bring forth children, Genesis 3:16. That's what happens at the foot of the cross. In pain she brings forth children.
We'll also note that in the first reading that we heard today from the book of Revelation, written by the same evangelist, again he uses the word woman in referring to Our Lady. When he says a great sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, was giving birth to a child destined to rule the nations, Revelation 12:1.
So not only in his gospel, but also in the last book of the New Testament, St. John uses that title for Our Lady, which is taken from the mouth of our Lord himself, and refers to Mary as the new Eve.
Because she is the co-redeemer of humanity, Our Lady has tremendous intercessory power before the throne of God. Her intercessory power in heaven resembles what we heard in today's gospel. Our Lady looks on our needs. She turns to her son, asks him for the graces that we need. And she, in turn, being queen of heaven and earth, remember on Sunday we talked about the kingship of Christ, we celebrated the kingship of Christ on Sunday. Well, Our Lady being queen, she can distribute the gifts and graces of redemption to whom she pleases, when she pleases, where she pleases, how she pleases. Because her will is one with the Father, with the Son, and with the Holy Spirit.
And her tremendous intercessory power is seen in today's feast day, in the gift of the miraculous medal, which Our Lady gave to us in 1830 through St. Catherine Laboure, a daughter of charity of St. Vincent of DePaul.
The miraculous medal is a humble means by which Our Lady opens the hearts of those who are turned away from the Lord, and also strengthens the hearts and gives grace to those who are already Jesus's friends.
Unlike the gifts of the sacraments, the miraculous medal can be given to anyone at any time, Catholics and non-Catholics alike. And Our Lady promised St. Catherine that those who wear the medal will receive great graces from her.
The medal has helped in the conversion of many and is still today a very powerful instrument of evangelization in a world which seems very much void of Christ's light and his hope.
So in closing, let's just thank Our Lord, not only for the precious gift of His mother, which He entrusted to us at the foot of the cross, but let's also thank Him that He's given us such a merciful and gracious intercessor in Our Lady.
And let's thank her for the gift of the miraculous medal. And let's thank her by actually distributing the medal to those who are in need. A medal distributed is a seed planted and often it does more good than you can imagine.
We pray for those to whom we give the medal and entrust the results to Our Lady who will reward our efforts, great or small, though they may be, with an invitation to the eternal wedding banquet in heaven, of which the Holy Eucharist, which we celebrate, is a foretaste. She will begin to invite those people to the banquet.
At the marriage feast of the Lamb, again of which the Apostle Saint John speaks in Revelation 19, there Our Lady will again be sure that no wine is lacking and that all will be filled with the love of God and the love of their neighbor and a joyous feast that will last for all eternity.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever, now and forever.