p. 17Recognition of Home by Jesus Christ—continued

Within a three hours’ walk of Nazareth, lay a little village called Cana; and there, one day in the early spring-time, more than eighteen centuries ago, a large social gathering of friends and relatives had assembled at the house of one of the inhabitants. The occasion was the giving away of a young bride to her betrothed; and it was celebrated, according to the custom of all ages, with much festivity. But among the Jews the festivity was only an adjunct to the religious ceremony which formed the essential part of marriage. And surely, there can be no time in a man or woman’s life when the aid and blessing of religion is more required, than on the day when the son leaves his father’s roof and the daughter tears herself away from her mother’s arms, the one to meet the other in a sacred, life-long union, the most intimate, the most binding, the most solemn that two human beings ever contract. Two paths merged into one, two hearts given into each other’s keeping, two lives flowing together through storm and sunshine, through weal and woe, through health and sickness, on to the great sea where all life-streams meet, such is marriage to the mind even of the most unthinking. But there is little in this picture that gives either bride or bridegroom any true idea of the ruggedness, often the weariness, oftener still the sorrows of the way before them. The future to them is like the crown of flowers they used to put on the head of the Jewish bride. There is no thorn there to make the temples ache or to shoot its sharp pain to the heart. There is no thought of disunion or estrangement, no thought of bitter words or cruel looks, no thought of the misery that so often attends household cares. From what source, then, is the patience to come that will sustain those two young lives through the unknown future? Who will give them the strength to be true to their plighted promise? Who will keep that young, untried love of theirs, pure and fresh and strong to the end? And when, in years to come, they will have young children growing up around them, will they be able of themselves to train them by word and example in the path of faith and holiness which they ought to tread? and if not, who will come to their aid? Only God can do all these things, and He does them through the Sacrament of marriage.

To initiate this Sacrament and to show His estimate of its importance, our divine Lord and His disciples assisted at the marriage of Cana, to which I alluded above. “There was a marriage in Cana of Galilee: and the mother of Jesus was there. And Jesus was also invited, and His disciples to the marriage.” (John ii. 1-2.) The first foundation of the Church had been laid a few days previously by the calling of some of the apostles: Jesus had commenced His public mission, and His first public ministerial act, and the first public ministerial act of His disciples were to assist at this marriage of Cana. We may infer then with truth that the blessing and the sanctification of the marriage-bond took precedence in our divine Lord’s mind of every other work, except the formation of His Church; and we can see that in introducing that Church to the labours in which it was ever more to the end of time to be engaged, how He showed it that its first care was to be the regeneration and the spiritualising of the family. Hence, the Sacrament of marriage seems to have been the first of the seven Sacraments instituted by our divine Lord; and although I am far from implying that it should be ranked in dignity above some of the other Sacraments, yet it may be safely and truly said, that it was intended to prepare human society for the faithful observance of Christian duty, for the due administration of the other Sacraments, and for the preservation and transmission of Christian faith. This threefold sublime end of the Sacrament of marriage is, I think, not unworthy of a little consideration, and I shall therefore ask your attention, dear reader, while I explain it in as few words as possible.

Most of the duties of men towards their fellow-men lie within the circle of their homes. I do not speak of course of those who, by a special call of their divine Spouse, have been drawn into the cloister, and whose life is literally hidden with Christ in God. Neither do I speak of those who have been led away from father and mother and all home relations to serve their divine Master as His ministers, and who have no earthly home-life, but have a substitute for it among the poor and the sick and the outcast and the unfortunate of their missions. I speak only of those who live in the family circle, as parents, or children, or servants; and I say that the bulk of their duties are confined to that circle. The head of a family, for instance, may have business relations with the outside world; but in nine cases out of ten the duties they impose on him are discharged with a view to the fulfilment of higher duties that he owes to his wife and children. So, too, with regard to these latter; they have no doubt engagements that take them from home perhaps daily, such as church, school, visits of charity or ceremony, &c., but if you examine them closely, you will find that they are all connected with home as their centre, and therefore show the truth of my statement. But husband and wife are, in their turn, the centre round which all the rest of the household is ranged, and with which it is vitally connected. Hence, if you enable them to discharge their duties faithfully; to give examples of truth, honesty, purity, patience, and the other domestic virtues to their children and servants, you may be assured you will build up there a well-ordered, happy Christian home. Now, marriage has been elevated to the dignity of a Sacrament for this very end, and hence it purifies the source of social life, and it provides a powerful help for the fulfilment of all the duties that man owes to his fellow-man.

It helps, too, not only the administration of the other Sacraments, but also the preservation and transmission of divine faith. This double office seems so manifest that it requires but very few words of explanation. Were it not for the grace conferred by marriage and the spiritual character it gives to parental love, there would be very little care for the religious training and education of children, nor would there be much anxiety about their baptism in infancy. I think I can appeal confidently to the experience of missionary priests in large towns and cities for a proof of this statement. Ask any one of them the result of mixed marriages, contracted in defiance of the Church before the Registrar; ask him the result of illegitimacy; or, putting the question in a more particular form, ask him has he the names of all the children of Catholic mothers in his parish enrolled in his baptismal registry; are those children sent to Catechism; have they been confirmed; have they made their first Confession and Communion? The answer to each of these questions will, I can foretell, be in the negative, unless some providential circumstance should have enabled the Church to take the place of the parents in the spiritual training of these little ones.

You will now understand, dear reader, why our divine Lord accepted the invitation to the marriage of Cana, and commenced His public life by attending at it and blessing it, and pouring out upon it those special helps and graces which were ever afterwards to be His rich, loving dowry to each Christian bride and bridegroom. He did so, to purify social life at its fountain-head; to sanctify husband and wife through marriage; to sanctify the household through the husband and wife; and to sanctify the world through the household.

Towards the close of the marriage feast, there was much embarrassment among the household, owing to the failure of the supply of wine provided for the occasion. We all know what happened. The mother of Jesus, who seems to have been there, as, thank God, she has been ever since, in every true Christian home, more as a member of the family than as a stranger,—the mother of Jesus, to save the family from confusion, interceded with her divine Son, and in answer to her prayer, seconded by the promptings of His own affectionate Heart, He changed six large vessels filled with water into wine.

If we examine carefully the motive for which our divine Lord performed this miracle, we shall obtain a further revelation of His views regarding home-life. A shadow was coming to darken the first bridal day of the newly married couple. The customary benediction-cup, in which each guest should pledge them, could not be drunk. The aged parents, who had felt so happy through the morning in the happiness of all around them, were to be pained and saddened by the reputed disgrace of want of hospitality. Our divine Lord would not have it so: He would save to that new home, and to every other home also, all the happiness He might, compatible with the destiny of fallen man: He would, in His relations with the world, permit no sorrow or pain, He would leave undried no human tears, unless the sorrow or pain or tears had a chastening purpose to fulfil. And so here. He put forth His divine power and worked His first miracle to keep bright and glad and joyful to the close that first day in the new life of the married couple.

I am not at all certain, that some persons may not accuse me here of trifling with the solemnity and austerity and the wholly spiritual character of our Redeemer’s mission. “You put out of sight,” I imagine I hear them say, “or, at least, you dwarf the true purpose of the Incarnation by giving so much importance to a very simple incident in our divine Lord’s Life. He came on earth to regenerate and redeem the world by His preaching and miracles and death. He proposed to raise human thoughts and affections above the cares and anxieties of life, and fix them by constant contemplation on the eternal kingdom of His glory. He instituted the Sacraments as means to this end; and as to marriage, He never intended that it should make men forget, by bestowing temporal happiness on their earthly homes, the imperishable happiness of that heavenly home to which alone they must look forward for peace and rest.”

Now I say in reply, that my intention in dwelling on our divine Lord’s relations to home life, is not to depreciate the higher objects for which He came into this world. In fact, the scope of my subject does not require me to speak of those higher objects at all; but, on the supposition that they are already known, to show how He intended His teaching to be carried out in every-day life. I say that He intended it to be carried out through an institution founded from the beginning, but abused and degraded, until He came to purify and elevate it, and to restore it to its original purpose. That institution was the society of husband, wife, and child, which we call home.

But there runs through the foregoing objection, a vein of thought about which I wish to say something; and I say it all the more willingly, as it is intimately connected with the further development of the subject of these chapters. It seems to be insinuated, then, in the objection that Jesus Christ made no account of man’s temporal happiness; that He cared nothing for the miseries, and sorrows, and sufferings, which, He knew, enveloped the earth like another atmosphere; but that His whole concern was for the restoration of fallen humanity to its pristine state of grace. Now this view of the character of our divine Lord is not entirely accurate. He had a human Heart, the tenderest, the most sympathetic, the most affectionate that ever beat in human breast. The sight of all pain and sorrow, grated on it as if a rasp-edged knife were drawn across it, and it yearned with an intense, infinite longing to relieve and console the sufferer. If there be in the Gospels one truth more clearly revealed than all others, it is that He felt in His Sacred Heart unbounded pity and compassion, not only for the spiritual miseries of His children here on earth, but also for every form of human wretchedness, into which those spiritual miseries had led them. Hence, He could not have been indifferent whether the men He met, or the homes He entered, were happy or unhappy. On the contrary, He must have always wished to see Himself surrounded with bright, cheerful countenances; and He must have always had a great love for happy homes; for otherwise how can we account for the uniform object of nearly all His miracles—namely to bring light and joy to afflicted families, by curing all manner of diseases, and even by raising the dead to life.

Of course, our divine Lord had an ulterior end in view in miraculously healing all who came to Him, and driving sorrow from the homes He visited. He wished to attach men to Him by gratitude, He wished to prove the divinity of His mission and teaching, He wished to convince the world that He was the Messiah. But, even though the temporal happiness He diffused around Him was only a means to an end, there is no reason for saying that He grudged it to men, or that He dealt it out as though it were some dangerous, medicinal poison, of which a drop too much might be fatal to the recipient. Imagine the joy of the widow of Naim when she returned home with her son restored to life, by the loving tenderness of the Redeemer who heard with compassion her heart-broken wail rise wild and desolate among the lamentations of the mourners. Imagine the joy of Martha’s and Mary’s home, that night after Jesus had called their brother back to them from the grave where his body lay rotting. Imagine the ecstasy of delight that was diffused in circles round about, from every miracle of His. Little children clapped their hands, and leaped, and cried with joy; old men bent down their bared heads in thankfulness, and their eyes streamed with tears of pleasure as they murmured a grateful “Nunc dimittis, Domine.” Wives, and husbands, and children, kindred near and distant, neighbours, acquaintances, and even strangers, all were moved each time the healing divine power was exercised, now on a blind father, now on a sickly mother, now on a dying child, or again, on a poor servant-boy. Our divine Lord knew well this effect of His miracles, and He delighted in it, and it was one of the motives that induced Him to perform them.

We are then justified in concluding, that Jesus Christ is not indifferent to our temporal happiness. May His name be blessed for ever! He sympathises with every form of human misery; and where we are faithful to the obligations we owe Him, He always sends us His consolations, and sends them too in no stinted, niggard measure. The marriage of Cana and the miracle performed at it, as well as most of the other miracles performed during His public ministry, bear testimony to this truth; and in the loving promise it contains, every true Christian heart reposes, confidently and peacefully, through all the events of life.