There was a wedding at Cana in Galilee.  The mother of Jesus was there as well as Jesus and his disciples. When they ran out of wine, the mother of Jesus said to him: "They have no more wine." Jesus said: "Woman, why turn to me? My hour has not yet come." His mother said to the servants: "Do whatever he tells you." John 2:1-6)  Jesus responded to his mother's request by asking the servants to fill six stone water jars used for purification with water and take them to the steward. What the steward tasted was wine, and he said "Everyone usually serves the best wine first, and then after everyone has had their fill, they serve the lesser wine; but you have saved the best wine until last." John 2:10) 

According to the Gospel of John, this was the first of the signs Jesus performed to manifest his origins and to lead people to believe in him.  Wine in Jewish lore was not only a sign of God's loving gifts to human beings, but also of divine wisdom. Here Jesus showed that the wine of the new Spirit fulfilled in abundance the old Law and the Prophets. Jesus himself was the perfect offspring of the Wisdom of God; only he could transform the simple, honest created elements into divine Life. The Wedding Feast of Cana becomes a sign of the even greater Banquet at the Feast in the Kingdom of God. 

In the same Gospel, this is the first time Mary interceded with Jesus. Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical Mother of the Redeemer, explains the Gospel story in this way: "The description of the Cana event outlines what is actually manifested as a new kind of motherhood according to the spirit and not just according to the flesh, that is to say, Mary's solicitude for human beings, her concern for them in their wants and needs." At the wedding feast as a guest, Mary noted the discontent and possible embarrassment of the newly married couple and their families. Her role, as mother of Jesus and intercessor in the Church, is to show her maternal compassion on behalf of the world's needs.  Without the Wisdom embodied in her Son, the world will never be transformed.