Fill your jars

After Mass this morning, I stuck around to pray the rosary. Meditating on the second luminous mystery, I almost started to cry. The second luminous mystery is about the wedding feast at Cana when Jesus performed his first public miracle. He turned water into wine.

But it was a miracle that almost didn’t happen. If Mother Mary had not insisted, Jesus likely wouldn’t have done it.

When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.”  

John 2:3-5

Mary completely ignored him. Turning to the servants, she said.

“Do whatever he tells you.”

I always picture Jesus sitting there exasperated with his Mother. I imagine he would have wanted to throw up his hands and say, “I just told you. It’s not my time!” No matter how he felt about it, he went ahead and did what his mother asked.

And it wasn’t all that complicated. It’s not the most elaborate of miracles that he ever performed. He only did one thing. He told the servants to:

Fill the jars with water.

That was it. The servants filled them up, and the water became really good wine.

The scripture doesn’t indicate that Jesus did anything special to perform the miracle. He didn’t spit on his finger, for instance, and stir the water with his hands. He didn’t raise those hands to heaven or utter some special prayer to transform matter.

He just listened to his mother, told other people to do stuff, and it happened. It became the best wine of the whole fest.

So why would I cry about that?

Well, I realized a few things. You se, I’ve used the same or similar excuse as Jesus did on hundreds of occasions. I bet all of us have. “What does this problem have to do with me? It’s not my time.”

But our Holy Mother can no longer wait for us to start our ministry. Hard times are coming. Evil is rising up everywhere. The demonic is walking around in the open nowadays if we just open our eyes. Just yesterday I saw signs for a “witchy market” near my house. I saw a truck delivering a beer called Irish Death. I saw a Youtube commercial advertising a “spirit” party with satanic symbolism. And a few weeks ago, I saw a Lesbian Magick fortune teller reading Tarot signs at a family-oriented Tacoma night market.

Mother church must now ignore our excuses. She is telling us to do something. We must all act. What does that look like?

Right now, we must tell everyone, “Fill your jars!”

That may mean different things to different people. To many, it may literally mean to get prepared for an upcoming famine, which is more and more likely on a global scale.

For all of us it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit. In John 4, Jesus says, “Whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” In John 7:39, it becomes clear that the water is referring to the Holy Spirit.

“Fill your jars” with the water Jesus gives and tell others to do the same.

There’s a line in the musical Les Miserables that goes: “May the wine of friendship never run dry…”

Sadly, the wine of friendship is running dry in our world. There are divisions everywhere. In our churches, our nations, our families.

The left and the right can no longer tolerate being in the same room with each other, and our Mother the Church is saying to us, “They have no more wine!”

It’s our job to tell everyone to fill their jars with the water that Jesus gives. If we are filled with that water ourselves, our Mother will tell the angels to do whatever we ask.

Just like Jesus, we can say, “Woman, what does this have to do with me?” But in the end, just like Jesus, we must relent and do as our Mother says.

Hard times are coming.

Fill your jars and help others to do the same.