Mother of God, Wedding at Cana, New Eve
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4.4. SAINT MARY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT4.4.1. THE NEW EVEThe wedding at CanaBefore concluding the era of the spiritual kinship, we still shall speak of Saint Mary, who is the spiritual Mother of all who are born through the faith in Jesus. In that Mary is similar to Eve, who is "the mother of all living" (Gen 3, 20). We know that Saint Mary is not only the Mother of Christ but also his Bride (see The incarnation), which is also confirmed by Genesis 2:21-24: "So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to overcome the man, and while he slept he took one of his ribs and filled up the place with flesh. From the rib which he had taken from the man, God formed a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said: ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called women because she was taken out of man.’ For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and cling to his wife and they shall become one flesh" (Gen 2:21-24). This passage relates to the Passion of Christ, more particularly to the boring of his side, from where poured out blood and water (Jn 19:34), which is closely associated with Mary, who was at the foot of the cross (Jn 19:25). To understand this, it is necessary to see Jesus' public mission with Mary's eyes. This mission began with the wedding in Cana, where Mary said to Jesus: "They have no wine" (Jn 2:1-3). It is evident that the guests of a feast do not care for provisions. Why therefore did Mary want her son to give them new wine? The answer is contained in the response of Jesus: "Women, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come." (Jn 2:4). We should not understand this reply as a rejection, for thereafter Jesus effectively got six stone jars filled with water, which he thereafter transformed into wine (Jn 2:5-10). He has thus accepted the invitation of Mary to give them wine, although its exhaustion was not truly Mary's main concern. It is exactly on this point, that is to say on what Mary expected from Jesus, that he partly disagreed with his mother, which we want to analyze now: his hour was in fact his Passion (Jn 12:23-24; 13:1; 17:1). He thus redeemed his people by the blood (He 9:11-15). Mary, by knowing who he was, induced him to reveal himself. Jesus, however, defended himself from being received as someone of this world. This is why Jesus only contradicted her on how he expected to reveal himself, hence not on the revelation itself. That is what he shows her by getting the six jars filled with water and transforming it into wine, which means that the one who was conceived by the Spirit (water) will suffer to the blood (wine). In this way he wanted to say that he will inherit no terrestrial kingdom, as the Jewish people and perhaps Mary expected of the Messiah. The reply of Jesus to Mary: "Women, what have you to do with me?" (Jn 2:4), is consequently not at all a rejection of Mary, as often protestant theologians claim, but makes part of the precision concerning his future. It’s the first implicit announcement of his future passion. Jesus will repeat these announcements to his disciples in the course of his mission (Lk 9:22; 18:31-33). Yet to Saint Mary he revealed it first. This revelation was necessary, for at this time the spirituality of the Kingdom of God was entirely unknown, which is precisely proven by the obstinate incredulity of his disciples in front of the repeated announcements of his death. So it was necessary to clarify this point, about which Mary could not have any knowledge. This is why one cannot draw any negative conclusion about Mary from her son's reply, especially because, unlike the disciples, there is no evidence of incredulity concerning Saint Mary.
At the foot of the crossThe Gospel of St. John mentions no other encounter between Jesus and his Mother from Cana to the Crucifixion. And the encounters the other Gospels relate happened from a distance, for Jesus refused to see Mary (Mt 12:46; Mk 3:31; Lk 8:19), which one cannot negatively interpret either, as we are going to see. We can therefore suppose that they did not meet between Cana and the Passion, which corresponds to the whole duration of his mission – that is to say to at least one year – for Jesus accomplished the miracle of Cana in the beginning of his mission and the Passion marked its end. This is why there is a narrow relationship between these two meetings: at the marriage in Cana Jesus gave Mary a hint that he is not a king of this world and that he would die; at the Passion in Jerusalem this was confirmed at their second meeting. This relationship could not have escaped Saint Mary. And when she saw the water and the blood flowing from Jesus' side pierced by the soldiers (Jn 19:31-37), she must certainly have thought back to Cana and to the water that Jesus had transformed into wine saying to her: "My hour has not yet come". All that made perceive to the Mother of God the spirituality of the kingdom of her son. She surely also wondered why Jesus never called her mother neither in Cana nor in Jerusalem, but each time woman (Jn 2:4; 19:26). He nevertheless called her mother in front of St. John, who stood with her at the foot of the cross and who is representative for the people of God: "By the cross of Jesus stood his mother [...] When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother: ‘Women, there is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple: ‘There is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her to his home" (Jn 19:25-27). The analogy with Adam’s sleep, during which God removed a rib from him to form Eve with it, is therefore manifest: she became the Woman, the Bride of Christ, at the level of his divinity and his "helper" (Gen 2:18) in view of the redemption of all men. This is why Saint Mary is the spiritual Mother of all living in Christ, such as the ancient Eve is the mother of all living in the sense of physical descent (Gen 3:20). And because Christ is the new Adam (1 Cor 15, 44-49), Mary is called the New Eve. The parallel is complex. To better understand it, figure 8 from The theory of descent and natural selection is again reproduced below.
Figure 8
At the resurrectionThe resurrection is announced by the awakening of Adam, who shouts at the view of the Woman: "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh" (Gen 2:23). According to this passage, we have to believe that Saint Mary stood beside Christ at his resurrection. In fact, there is nothing in the Gospels that mentions this explicitly, but they do not exclude it either. On the contrary: on the morning of the resurrection when the women arrived at the tomb, they found it open but did not discover Jesus’ body (Lk 24:2-3). That raises the question if the stone was rolled away by the two angels (Lk 24:4) in order to allow Jesus to go out of the tomb or anyone else to enter? If we take into account that Jesus later appeared to his disciples in a room whose doors were closed (Jn 20:19), it becomes evident that the stone of the tomb was not rolled away to allow Jesus to go out of it. Hence, the stone was certainly removed to allow someone to enter. And this person was surely Mary the new Eve, since according to the prophecy, she had to be present at the "awakening" of Jesus (Gen 2:22). Thus, she alone had faith in the resurrection Jesus announced to all (see The sense of the phase of apparition why she was the only one). This faith made of her a "flesh" similar to that of Christ (Gen 2:23), that is to say she became similar to him, not on the level of his divinity of course but in the sense of being without sin. She is consequently the new Eve, a title that, in theology, was formulated because of the comparison established by St. Paul between the first and the last Adam, or in other words between the ancient and the new Adam, who is Christ (1 Cor 15, 44-49). |
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