Wedding wine runs out, and Our Lady speaks up

ROME, October 7, 2026 AD — There was a wedding at Cana, in Galilee, and Jesus and his disciples had been invited. His mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, was there too.

Today the Church keeps the memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary. People who pray the Rosary say ten Hail Marys at a time. While they say each ten, they think about one scene from the lives of Jesus and his mother.

In 2002 AD Pope St. John Paul II added five new scenes to the Rosary. They come from the years when Jesus was out preaching, and they are called the mysteries of light. The wedding at Cana is the second of them. The Gospels say very little about Our Lady in those years, and Pope St. John Paul II wrote: “In these mysteries, apart from the miracle at Cana, the presence of Mary remains in the background.”

“They have no wine”

At the wedding, the wine ran out, and Our Lady said to her Son: “They have no wine.” Saint Alphonsus Liguori wrote about that moment in his book The Glories of Mary. He wrote that Our Lady was feeling for the family, who were upset and embarrassed.

Jesus answered his mother: “O woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come.”

After that answer, Our Lady said to the servants: “Do whatever he tells you.”

Six stone jars

Six stone jars stood nearby, and each one held twenty or thirty gallons. They held the water for Jewish religious washing. Jesus told the servants, “Fill the jars with water,” and they filled them right up to the brim. Then Jesus told them to take some out and carry it to the steward of the feast. They did.

The steward tasted it, and the water had become wine. He had no idea where it had come from, but the servants who had drawn the water knew. So the steward called the bridegroom over and said to him: “Every man serves the good wine first; and when men have drunk freely, then the poor wine; but you have kept the good wine until now.”

It was the first of Jesus’s signs. He “manifested his glory; and his disciples believed in him.”