Eucharistic Meditations - Wine

Every Christian, Lord, undoubtedly associates 'wine' with the wedding feast of Cana; wine is universally linked with feasting. Wine was the normal drink at all meals and together with bread it formed the staple diet for Mediterranean peoples. Yet wine flows freely on special festive occasions the world over, for it somehow recaptures God's abundant blessings and the joys of living.

Victory in battle was usually marked by copious wine drinking: Melchisedek brought bread and wine to bless Abraham and celebrate victory over the four kings (Gen. 14:18-20). The period of Egyptian slavery records no wine-drinking, but as the Israelites settled down in the Promised Land, offering wine to God together with the first-fruits became a way of thanking him for his continued blessings (Lev. 23:13). Wine, particularly, is God's gift to his people offered without charge (Is. 55:1-3). An abundance of wine is a sure sign of prosperity and of God's blessings (Prov. 3:10) while scarcity or the lack of it a sign of God's displeasure (Deut. 28:39).

Against this biblical background, Lord Jesus, the new wine you provided at the Cana wedding takes on a richer meaning. It recalls the saga of our relationship with God: filled with God's blessings from the beginning, humankind soon chose to forfeit these privileges through their callous response to God's love. Having run out of the wine of God's love, we would never have been able to regain our lost status as God's children by ourselves. But you intervened marvelously restoring it to us in a novel way: you associated it with the water-jars of humble service rendered to the needy. As at Cana, what we draw out of the stone jars is ordinary water but it turns into the rich healing, spirit-lifting wine of a Father's love in the very act of sharing it with our unfortunate brethren.

Wine also signifies God's wrath as in Rev. 14:10. But present for us in the Eucharist you transform that wrath into unmistakable evidence of the Father's compassion - the greatest gift you could ever give us: yourself, whole and entire. Wine is also medicinal in the story of the Good Samaritan. You pour oil and wine on our wounds of sin and shelter us in the Inn which is your Body, the Church.

Not surprising then that every Passover Meal includes several cups of wine, the last being the 'Cup of blessing' thanking God for deliverance from slavery and the Covenant of love. Over the years, wine became a symbol of this covenantal relationship: when you proclaimed the Good News of an unbelievably new level of relationship with the Father, you insisted that this 'new wine' be put into fresh skins - uncontaminated by the self-centred attitudes of the first covenant which the people broke ever so often. Used at Eucharist, it becomes the Cup of the new and everlasting Covenant, the fullness of life you offer us; we gratefully pour it out for the forgiveness of sins and the creation of a new world.