Wine. The fruit of the vine.
There is red wine and white wine and blush and … .
There is cheap wine and expensive wine and wine that spans
the distance between the two ends.
There is a wine to suit every taste and every pocketbook if
you are a connoisseur of the fruit of the vine or simply a wino looking for
something cheap and legal to help deal with the emotional aches of life.
Honest confession. I have spent some time on the edges of
both of these camps at one point or another during the decades of my life. Not
lately though.
Our church, Saint Robert Bellarmine Catholic Church, has a
group that meets on Tuesday nights for a study that focuses on the Mass
readings for the upcoming Sunday. The instructional program is something our
church has piped in, the instructor and material are top notch, and each
session comes with a worksheet with pertinent questions to consider.
There are a number of avenues of emphasis that can be placed
on the first of Christ’s miracles. There is certainly the emphasis on the
miracle itself – that Christ took ordinary water and turned it into high
quality wine. Any quality of wine would have made a statement. But Christ
turned it into the best wine that could have possibly been served.
Our Mass readings for today, the ones we studied during the
week, included Christ’s first miracle at the wedding feast in Cana where he
turned water into wine.[1]
Mass today was beautiful. It always is.
There is something very dear and special about our little
parish where the body of gathered faithful comes from several national and
cultural backgrounds, a small parish where several languages are spoken. Shirli
and I were surprised when we first discovered such an international gathering
here in what can honestly be described as small town rural Alabama. We love it
and feel right at home in this small, multi-cultural, loving family.
This gathered family reminds me of the little song that we
were taught as small children in Sunday School – Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and
yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight. Except we are not
children being taught to sing words that our parents and teachers do not live.
There are children here. There are also adults here – adults communing in
fellowship together as the One Body of Christ and sharing together one chalice
at the altar.
The thought ran through my mind during the reading of the
Gospel.
The thought was more in the form of a prayer than just some
random thought running through my mind. I get a lot of those random runners. At
times they make a lot of bothersome noise. This one wasn’t random noise. It was
one that beckoned me to pay attention. I pulled the notepad out of my pocket
and wrote it down so it would not escape me.
“Lord, make me a
better wine.”
I could, if I chose, remain content in being the quality of
wine that I am.
I could, if I chose, make excuses and accept where I am as
deep enough in my surrender to Christ. I could, if I chose, measure my own
position in Christ by the marks on the wall left by the masses that are
comfortable where they are.
I think, though, that it would be a miserable state of
contentment.
The love of Christ and our love for Christ will always call
us deeper into him.
So I pray …
“Lord, make me a
better wine.”
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