Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the waterpots with water.  And they filled them up to the brim” (King James Bible, John 2:7)

These waterpots were of considerable size since their capacity was about 20 or 30 gallons each.  They stood near the entrance of the house at Cana where the wedding was being held, and the water they contained would be poured over the feet of guests to refresh them on their arrival after walking along the hot and dusty roads.

By the time the wine ran out the wedding feast itself was well advanced, and no more guests could be expected.  To start refilling the waterpots, therefore, at this stage would appear to be so much wasted time and effort.  Yet the remarkable thing is that when Jesus came over to the servants and said, “Fill the waterpots with water”, they filled them, not up to the neck, but up to the brim.  

If we assume that two thirds of the water which they originally contained had been used up, it meant that the servants had to draw and carry at least another 80 gallons from the well or fountain.  And yet they went on drawing that water until the six waterpots were all brimful.

And why?  Because it was Jesus who had asked them.  What they did they did for him, and being the sort of person he was they could not do too much for him.  They did not know, and could not have guessed, what the result would be, but their regard for him and their faith in him were such that they asked no questions but willingly and cheerfully performed a task which would otherwise have been irksome, exasperating and senseless.

We may compare their task that day with what at times seem to be the humdrum and fruitless duties of our life as Christians.  There are, for example, our daily prayers when we don’t feel a bit like praying, when perhaps God seems so far away as to have no real existence at all.

And yet, as children of our Heavenly Father, we should each morning thank him for the great things in life, things so great that we often take them for granted or let them go unnoticed – for the fact that God has made us in his own image to share his eternal glory; for our health and strength; for our homes and those near and dear to us; for our membership of his Church and for its Sacraments; and above all for Our Lord’s Birth in Bethlehem and death upon the Cross for our sinful and unworthy selves.

So too in the evening we should confess to God the particular ways in which we have failed him during the day and ask his forgiveness.  For so often we ignore God, so often we rebel against him, so often we deliberately disregard what our conscience bids us do and be; and at the end of the day in return for all his goodness to us, the most we can do – and the least we can do – is to bring to him our penitence.

So too with our daily prayer for others.  Besides those whom we know personally, there are so many people whom we hear about, and whom we cannot help directly and who need helping.  But we can help them by praying for them.  We may see no result, but they will, as we ourselves have done when others have prayed for us.

And then there are our Communions.  No one surely should be content with communicating less often than every Sunday.  If we could really grasp what a wonderful and precious gift the Blessed Sacrament is, surely we would want to do so.  But just because the gift is so great, being nothing other than Our Lord himself in his ascended and glorified Body, we should always approach the altar well-disposed to others, and with penitence and faith towards God.

These are all elementary Christian duties by doing which we can assure Our Blessed Lord of our friendship with him.  As he said, “You are my friends if you do what I command you” (NRSV, John 15:14, our emphasis).  And Holy Church joins his Blessed Mother in bidding us, “Do whatever he tells you” (RSV, John 2:5).

Yet the undeniable fact remains that however faithfully and exactly we discharge our duties, we can never lean back and congratulate ourselves.  As Our Lord has pointedly reminded us, “…when you have done all that is commanded you, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty’ “ (RSV, Luke 17:10).

For we can never do enough for God, let alone too much.  Our offering to our Eternal Maker is always sadly imperfect and falls far short of what is his due.  But that is all the more reason why it should be as near brimful as we can make it, and brimful in every way.  For it is not only a question of the number of duties involved or how often we actually fulfil them.  There is above all the spirit in which they are fulfilled.  And that means there must be within the heart that inner love for God which controls the very thoughts in our minds; which excludes all motives of personal advantage in our actions; and which also animates us with an ungrudging good will towards others.

Are we content to fulfil our duties to God in a formal or mechanical way?  Or do we try to give him a little more love than we feel like giving?  For, like the servants at Cana, what we do, we do for him; and when it all seems useless and unrewarding, our very willingness to do it is a token that it is truly done for him.  So when the practices of the Christian religion seem dull and uninteresting, when our emotions are cold and uninspired, then the persistent application of the will to dutiful obedience is a sure sign of our love even if our heart seems empty.

And when we have faced that test and struggled on, then what seemed a monotonous and almost pointless religious routine, becomes transfigured into a means of pleasing him, into something that is radiant with inward joy.  He has changed our water into wine.

That is the reward of dutiful obedience to God, and the more faithful and dogged the obedience, the fuller the joy.

For what we get out of the Christian life – from its worship or anything else – is in proportion to what we have put into it: just as the amount of wine which the servants drew from the waterpots was determined by the quantity of water they had so laboriously poured into them.  

And Our Lord is worthy indeed of our love and of our obedience.  Let us give him both.