“And So He Revealed His Glory”: Cana and the Sacramentality of Marriage1

37 The Thomist 78 (2014): 37-63 “AND SO HE REVEALED HIS GLORY”: CANA AND THE SACRAMENTALITY OF MARRIAGE1 JOHN S. GRABOWSKI The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. N AN OFT-QUOTED TEXT the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation teaches that “the study of the sacred page is, at it were, the soul of sacred theology.”2 Such a statement points to the primacy of Scripture in the council’s program of ressourcement. It also suggests that the sacred text along with Sacred Tradition is the life force or animating principle of the theological enterprise as a whole insofar as God’s personal self-communication known as revelation is communicated in it.3 Conversely, it can be taken to 1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Academy of Catholic Theology Annual Conference, Washington, D.C. on May 23, 2012. I have benefited from many helpful comments and suggestions made by those present. This paper was given as part of a twofold presentation with the exegetical study on John 2:1-11 of the same name by Fr. William Kurz, S.J. which has not yet been published. I am also particularly indebted to Fr. Kurz, William Mattison, and Lawrence Welch for helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper. 2 Dei verbum 24. The citation is from The Documents of Vatican II, ed. Walter M. Abbott, S.J. (Piscataway, N.J.: New Century Publishers, 1966), 127. 3 This self-communication takes the form of both deeds and words (Dei verbum 2) and finds its culmination in the person of Christ (Dei verbum 4). This personal act of God in revealing himself calls for an equally personal response on the part of the human being in the assent of faith (Dei verbum 5). Revelation is therefore mediated by Scripture and sacred Tradition but is not simply identical to it. As Joseph Ratzinger, commenting on Bonaventure’s concept of revelation observes, for the Seraphic Doctor, “it would have been impossible to refer to Scripture simply as ‘revelation,’ as is the normal linguistic use today. Scripture is the essential witness of revelation, but revelation is something alive, something greater and more: proper to it is the fact that it arrives and is perceived—otherwise it could not have become revelation. Revelation is not a meteor fallen to earth that now lies somewhere as a rock mass from which rock samples can be taken and submitted to the laboratory analysis. Revelation has instruments; but it is not separable from the living God, and it always requires a living I 38 JOHN S. GRABOWSKI indicate that when theological concepts are severed from this animating principle they can wither and become shrunken and deformed, being reduced to mere human formulations or cultural constructs. One area in which evidence of such a rupture can be found is in some recent theological treatments of the sacramentality of marriage. The utilization of modern critical methods of biblical study challenged the sometimes facile attempts by earlier Catholic theologians to point to specific texts in the New Testament as proofs of Christ’s institution or elevation of marriage to the status of a sacrament. It is true that read through the lens of historical critical study, the New Testament does not yield a definitive proof text to which one can point as the occasion on which this elevation occurred.4 But some modern historically grounded approaches have gone further, positing a wide divergence between the early Church’s understanding and practice of marriage and that which emerged in the High Middle Ages. In this view marriage in the New Testament and early Christian era was understood as a largely secular, human relationship celebrated within a familial context as opposed to a sacral event conducted under ecclesial control, as in the medieval Church. A full consideration of this disconnect between Scripture and current sacramental theology created by certain historical critical approaches to marriage in the New Testament and the early Christian era exceeds the scope of this study. However, a case in point of this trend is provided by the treatment of the account of the wedding feast of Cana...