The Bible begins and ends with a wedding: At the beginning, the marriage of our first parents; and at the end, the marriage of Christ and the Church, inaugurating the new creation.

In between these two weddings is the fall, and all the messed-up marriages, with rebellious children and false worship. The joy is gone; the wine seems to have run out, and what’s left isn’t sitting so well inside us.

The wine running out symbolizes the thorns creeping up from the ground, the betrayal of a friend, the death that comes to all in the end….