Newman on the Feast of Cana and the Feast before Christ's Passion

I have to thank Michael Pakaluk for featuring this sermon in his translation and commentary on St. John's Gospel (The Voice of Mary in the Gospel according to John). Newman wrote it while still an Anglican and it was published in Sermons on Subjects of the Day: "Our Lord's Last Supper and His First". According to the chronology of his sermons it was offered on Quinquagesima Sunday (February 26) in 1843, two years and several months before Newman joined the Catholic Church. (Sermons on Subjects of the Day is the volume which includes his last sermon as an Anglican, "The Parting of Friends" delivered in Littlemore on September 25, 1843.)

In this sermon Newman discusses the importance of feasts in general from the Old Testament to the New (the parting feast of Laban and Jacob; the Passover; Elisha's slaughtering the oxen for a feast before he follows Elijah; the feast with St. Matthew after he follows Jesus). Then he remarks:

Nay, may we not say that our Lord Himself had commenced His ministry, that is, bade farewell to His earthly home, at a feast? for it was at the marriage entertainment at Cana of Galilee that He did His first miracle, and manifested forth His glory. He was in the house of friends, He was surrounded by intimates and followers, and He took a familiar interest in the exigencies of the feast. He supplied a principal want which was interfering with their festivity. It was His contribution to it. By supplying it miraculously He showed that He was beginning a new life, the life of a Messenger from God, and that that feast was the last scene of the old life. And, moreover, He made use of one remarkable expression, which seems to imply that this change of condition really was in His thoughts, if we may dare so to speak of them, or at all to interpret them. For when His Mother said unto Him, "They have no wine," He answered, "What have I to do with thee?" [John ii. 3, 4.] He had had to do with her for thirty years. She had borne Him, she had nursed Him, she had taught Him. And when He had reached twelve years old, at the age when the young may expect to be separated from their parents, He had only become more intimately one with them, for we are told that "He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them." [Luke ii. 51.] Eighteen years had passed away since this occurred. St. Joseph (as it seems) had been taken to his rest. Mary remained; but from Mary, His Mother, He must now part, for the three years of His ministry. He had gently intimated this to her at the very time of His becoming subject to her, intimated that His heavenly Father's work was a higher call than any earthly duty. "Wist ye not," He said, when found in the Temple, "that I must be about My Father's business?" [Luke ii. 49.] The time was now come when this was to be fulfilled, and, therefore, when His Mother addressed Him at the marriage feast, He answered, "What have I to do with thee?" What is between Me and thee, My Mother, any longer? "The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand." [Mark i. 15.]

And hence the words which I have quoted were but the introduction to others like them, in which He seemed to put His Mother from His thoughts, as being called to the work of a divine ministry. When He was told that His Mother and His brethren stood without, and sent unto Him, calling Him, He seemed to answer, that henceforth He had no mother and no brethren after the flesh, for He was called on to fulfil His own precept, as fulfilling all righteousness, and to "hate His father and mother, and brethren and sisters, yea, and His own life also." [Luke xiv. 26.] "He answered and said unto him that told Him, Who is My Mother? and who are My brethren? and He stretched forth His hand towards His disciples, and said, Behold My Mother and My brethren. For whosoever shall do the will of My Father which is in heaven" (about whose "business," in His own former words, He was then engaged), "the same is My brother and sister, and Mother." [Matt. xii. 48-50.]

The inferred tone of Jesus's words to His Mother and the use of the word Woman rather than Mother at the Marriage Feast of Cana has troubled readers and led some to think that Jesus did not love His mother, or was rebuking her in some way. The other episodes Newman quotes have sometimes been used to denigrate the Blessed Mother, to deny her holiness and even the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.

But Newman offers a different interpretation: Jesus served His Heavenly Father's will in His ministry and His passion until He acknowledged and provided for the Blessed Virgin Mary before He dies on the Cross:

Nor is there any token recorded in the Gospels of His affection for His Mother, till His ministry was brought to an end, and we know well what were the tender words which almost immediately preceded "It is finished." His love revived, that is, He allowed it to appear, as His Father's work was ending. "There stood by the cross of Jesus, His Mother, and His Mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus therefore saw His Mother, and the disciple standing by whom He loved, He saith unto His Mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith He to the disciple, Behold thy Mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home." [John xix. 25-27.]

And Newman also sees a deeper meaning to this pattern of feasts and parting at the beginning and the end of Christ's ministry:

He took leave then of His Mother at a feast, as He afterwards took leave of His disciples at a feast. But there is perhaps a still closer connexion between the feast of Cana and His Paschal Supper, and, as we are already engaged in the subject, it may be allowable to proceed with it.

It will be observed, then, that though He was bidding farewell to His earthly home in the one, and His disciples in the other, yet in neither case was He leaving them for good, but for a season. His Mother He acknowledged again when He was expiring; His disciples on His resurrection. And He gave both the one and the other intimations, not only that He was then separating Himself from them, but also that it was not a separation for ever. . . .

And now let us turn to that other most sacred and sad feast to which the text relates; sad because it was designed to introduce, not His ministry, but His passion, yet in this respect agreeing with the feast in which He began to manifest His glory, that it was a feast of valediction, a sort of sober carnival, before He entered upon His trial. We shall find, as in the former feast, that He intimated both that He was leaving those with whom He had hitherto companied, yet that it was for a time only, not for ever. . . .

Such seems to be the connexion between the feast with which our Lord began, and that with which He ended His ministry. Nay, may we not add without violence, that in the former feast He had in mind and intended to foreshadow the latter? for what was that first miracle by which He manifested His glory in the former, but the strange and awful change of the element of water into wine? and what did He in the latter, but change the Paschal Supper and the typical lamb into the sacrament of His atoning sacrifice, and the creatures of bread and wine into the verities of His most precious Body and Blood? He began His ministry with a miracle; He ended it with a greater.

Although Newman offered this sermon at the end of the pre-Lenten Septuagesima period, "Our Lord's Last Supper and His First" presents some wonderful insights into the first two days of the Holy Triduum, Holy Thursday and Good Friday. Wishing you all a holy and blessed Triduum, I'll be back on Easter Monday! God bless you all!

Image credits (all public domain): The Marriage Feast of Cana from Les Grandes heures de Jean de Berry (1409); Fra Angelico - Crucifixion with the Virgin, John the Evangelist, and Mary Magdalene; and The first Eucharist, depicted by Juan de Juanes in The Last Supper, c. 1562.