Chapter II · Location 2 of 21
Chapter 2 · Open to readFrom John · Douay–Rheims / Challoner (1749–1752)
How do Cana and the temple show different responses to Jesus’s acts?
Atlas of Saints · Chapter summary
The wine at Cana leads disciples to believe; the temple expulsion leads to a sign question and a saying understood after resurrection.
Chapter breakdown
On the third day a marriage takes place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’s mother is present, and Jesus and his disciples are invited. When the wine fails, his mother tells him they have none. He addresses her as Woman, asks what it is to him and her, and says his hour has not yet come. She tells the waiters to do whatever he says. The edition disputes commentators who hear harshness: it reads her next instruction as showing that she knew the miracle to come and that he performed it at her request. It also cautions that tone and countenance are known only to those present or from what follows; the same words can indicate anger or its reverse depending on delivery. No actual tone or expression is supplied.
Six stone waterpots for Jewish purification hold two or three measures each. Jesus orders them filled, and the waiters fill them to the brim. He tells them to draw out and carry to the chief steward. The steward tastes water made wine without knowing its origin, though the waiters who drew it know. He calls the bridegroom and says good wine is usually served first and worse wine after people have drunk well, but this good wine has been kept until now. This beginning of miracles manifests Jesus’s glory and his disciples believe. Jesus, his mother, brethren and disciples then go to Capharnaum and remain not many days.
With the pasch near, Jesus goes to Jerusalem and finds temple sellers of oxen, sheep and doves, with money changers sitting. He makes what is described as a scourge of little cords and drives them out along with sheep and oxen, pours out the changers’ money and overturns their tables. He tells dove sellers to remove these things and not make his Father’s house a house of traffic. His disciples remember the written words about zeal for God’s house consuming him. Asked for a sign for these acts, Jesus tells them to destroy this temple and he will raise it in three days. They object that the temple has been forty-six years in building. The narrator explains that he means his body. After his resurrection the disciples remember and believe Scripture and his words. Many believe in his name at the Jerusalem festival on seeing his signs, but Jesus does not trust himself to them because he knows all people and needs no testimony about what is in a person.
The story inside
The steward tastes good wine without knowing where it came from; the waiters who drew the water know. He addresses the bridegroom as though the wine’s serving order were his arrangement. The narrative distinguishes those perspectives, then names the act as the beginning of miracles and describes the disciples’ belief. It supplies no embarrassment threat, cost calculation or precise moment of transformation.
Lessons worth keeping
- 1The annotation cautions against assuming a harsh tone and supplies its own interpretation; it does not provide a Semitic-idiom explanation or recorded gesture.
- 2The waterpots hold measures in this edition; a conversion to firkins or modern liters would need separate verified evidence.
- 3The temple-body explanation and disciples’ later remembering preserve when the saying is understood; the chapter does not call festival believers superficial or describe applause.
Test your recall
Who knows the wine’s origin when the chief steward tastes it?
Source edition and notes
Douay–Rheims, revised by Richard Challoner (1749–1752). Project Gutenberg no. 1581. Locators refer to lines in the admitted pg1581.txt edition. Source notes may include Challoner commentary.
Lines 120794–120795
Whatsoever he shall say to you
Lines 120831–120832
make not the house of my Father a house of traffic
Lines 120840–120841
three days I will raise it up
