When the guests, weary from their long travels, retired to sleep, she looked for Jesus, desirous to speak with him alone, and to learn what lay in his heart. She found him in Joseph’s workshop tinkering with an old chair. From the shadows she observed him working in the half-light of the oil lamp and recalled the many times she had come here seeking solace. A desire swelled to go to him and to hold him like a mother holds a son, but he seemed so different. Much had passed since that night long ago when he had left to seek out the Baptist. The time in between seemed to her like a vast ocean and she only a weary boat looking for a shore. And so she hesitated.
Sensing her presence he looked up. ‘This chair needs mending.’
‘Chairs break from too much sitting down. I let those, who sit to mend the chairs.’
Jesus made a smile at her playfulness, and a smile grew on her face to see his. She had brought a pitcher of water with her and now poured him a cup. ‘Are you thirsty?’
‘Like a camel!’ he said, ‘You see, I haven’t forgotten your words.’
‘No…I see that you haven’t.’
He drank a little and paused to observe her, and in that pause she saw him change before her eyes. In a flicker, both a tempest of pain and the most expanded lightness of being became apparent. He seemed like those Nazarites who returned from their caves having battled with the devils in their souls. He must have fought and overcome something and now this overcoming had generated that great effulgence she could see spilling out from him.
‘It seems I am always seeing something in you!’ she said.
‘What do you see?’ His eyes held hers.
To look at him near blinded her and so she looked away. ‘I don’t know what to tell you…I see a dazzling glory!’ she looked again, ‘Praise be God! I see…’
‘What?’
‘I see the Son of God!’ Immediately she put a hand to her mouth as if she had blasphemed.
‘Don’t be afraid, you have committed no wrong…’ he said, ‘trust in your heart.’
Tears came into her eyes. ‘I feel joy!’ She lost her balance then and she was shaking. He steadied her and held her face close to his.
‘This is heaven expressing itself through you, for this is the first time my mother in heaven sees the Son who long ago departed from her…she sees me through your eyes!’
Again she felt she would faint, and to forestall it he held her with one hand and took the cup of water and brought it to her lips. ‘Drink this,’ he said, ‘it will sustain you.’
When she took a sip she was full of confusion. She looked into the cup trying to decide whether she believed it.
She stared at him, ‘How does this taste of wine Jesus?’
Jesus nodded. ‘It is only water…but what lives between you and me can make even water taste of wine.’
She had heard these words before; they echoed the words spoken by the Anchorite in Egypt so many years ago.
‘This is a mother’s love for her son,’ she marvelled.
‘And his love for his mother,’ he replied.
Before she could say more the storm of light that had surrounded Jesus ebbed away. So swiftly did it go that she wondered if she’d seen it at all.
Returned to those eyes was the calm expression she knew. ‘You look tired…’ he said to her, ‘Tomorrow is another busy day.’
She hesitated, ‘I have been saying fare-thee-well to you all your life Jesus, and now I find myself not wanting to leave you, lest you disappear into thin air!’
Jesus nodded. ‘I know. But this is a new season, and we must not say fare-thee-well, we must say, Shalom.’ Fixing her with his eyes he let his face open in a smile. ‘Shalom, mother…shalom!’
He hugged her and she hugged him and embarrassed and happy closed her eyes, settling this word into her heart.
Shalom.
When the moment was over she took the pitcher and cup from Jesus and turned around to walk out of the workshop, feeling the swelling of a love so great in her heart that she could neither contain it, nor properly express it.
‡
‘But it was only days later,’ Lea explained to me, ‘at a wedding of a relative that she realised how destiny had fashioned that moment with Jesus for her understanding.’
‘You are speaking of the Wedding at Cana, aren’t you? Where the water tastes of wine,’ I said, to her. ‘This has always bewildered me.’
‘You see, pairé,’ she said, ‘the love of a heavenly mother for her heavenly son is a love beyond earth and blood. Such a love can inspire a feeling of good will that is so strong that it can make water taste of wine, that is, that it can make all men feel like kin!’