Becoming Wine…

“Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready… clothed in fine linen, bright and pure – for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.” (Rev. 19:7-8, RSV)

Grapes grow from abiding in the vine, but they must be crushed first and then transformed through that crushing to become wine, the symbol of joy and celebration.

At Cana, Jesus takes mere water and, as the divine Bridegroom, speaks his efficacious words, and thus provides a veritable ocean of wine for the wedding banquet and celebration, an anticipation of his own future Heavenly wedding feast as the Lamb of God .

At the holy sacrifice of the Mass, the Eucharistic wine element is once again transformed by Jesus’s words into a different substance, a substance even better than wine: Jesus’s own blood.  And that “blood of the new and eternal covenant”, the covenant ratified by Jesus’s Passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension, becomes the source of eternal life and everlasting joy for us. His shed blood joins us to Him with a familial oneness, for that is precisely what covenant is: the binding of persons into a family.  The Mass thus becomes an occasion of celebration, much like that of a big family wedding.

Jesus’s own crushing unleashed our redemption from sin, death and hell.  He calls us, his disciples, to imitate him by shouldering our own suffering, our own “crosses”.  We are to follow after him in loving union with his sacrifice by dying to our own selfishness and self-interest out of love for him, loving him by loving those around us generously as He called us to do.  How?  By forgiving them, by bearing with their frailities, by foregoing our demands that they act in accordance with how we think they ought to act.

When we endeavor to do this through the enablement of his grace in the everyday circumstances of our lives, He transforms our suffering – our own “crushing ” – into his very own supernatural Life.   The “water” of our daily irritations and frustrations can actually become the sweet “wine” of celebration joy.  We need only to “…do whatever he tells you.” (see John 2:1-11).

The Revelation passage above speaks of the “fine linen, bright and pure” which we as the Bride of Christ are to wear at the Heavenly wedding supper.  The “righteous deeds” we do as we endeavor to carry our “cross” lovingly and well are the way to “make ourselves ready”, to make sure we are properly clothed.  Let us not try to enter the banquet without making ourselves ready by wearing the proper “wedding garment ” (see Matthew 22:11-14).