In our times, when the marriage and family are the subjects of a whole social diatribe, it is good to revisit the wedding scene of Cana in John 2:1-11.

The setting of a peasant feast, the humble and intimate atmosphere of the wedding celebration, the presence of special guests, Mary and Jesus, make this passage of the Gospel an authentic icon of family, marriage, a man-woman-society relationship. It talks about the family institution, which is the foundation stone and the essential element of the social life.

The wedding of Cana, in Galilee, represents human marriages with their joys, their suffering and their hopes.

Cana is the place to live because there is the good wine of relationship, respect, dialogue, understanding, mutual trust. It is a place where the presence of God is guaranteed, for He is the one who gives the good wine which rejoices the heart of men. It is His presence that brings to the marriage of Cana the taste for the Covenant and the fragrance of novelty. Jesus and Mary, who act as intercessors, bring good wine to the wedding feast, new wine in new wineskins (cf. Matthew 9:14-17). Indeed, their significant presence gives the party a whole new meaning, opens to hope and dismantles the grief of a wretched fiasco.

Cana is a meeting place, meeting the couple, meeting the guests, meeting God and the world. It is a place of relations, for no family should be closed in on itself. It is the specificity of the family to create relationships, to be open to those around them, to become a meeting place and exchange. If the family is unhealthy, it comes from its closure; if the family suffers, it comes from a lack of relations, which vivifies the intimate relationship of the spouses. The family becomes sick when it counts on having and very little on being!

By changing water into wine and good wine, Jesus shows us how it is necessary for our families to enter in the process of conversion, in a dynamic of change. The water, which represents our dull, sometimes limited humanity, must be transformed into good wine by the active presence of Jesus Christ and the intercession of Virgin Mary and then it will pour forth for the joy of the guests.

The spouses had invited Mary and Jesus as favorite guests. Without a wedding celebrated in the presence of Jesus and Mary and then lived in their company, the beautiful human love will lose its joy of life, lack fidelity and lose itself. Without the presence of Jesus and Mary, in the life of a couple, without a constant bond of prayer and without a revision of life in a humble mutual dialogue, the grace of the beautiful Christian love will be lost. Without the Sunday Eucharist, without regular confession, without personal and couple prayers, love, good wine of jars will run out, and the celebration will turn into a nightmare.

Families, go to Cana! Couples go to Cana! Betrothed go to Cana! It is at the school of Mary and Jesus that we will rediscover the joy of living, the good wine of the frank and serene relationship, the desire for communion, the desire for full and invigorating relationships! Let’s go to Cana to learn to drink the good wine, the decanted wine, the delicious wine of the family provided by God himself.

Do whatever He tells you! Here is the secret of Cana. It’s the secret of life!