In societies of the past, and to some extent even today, women had a sixth sense, a special ability to read the “weak signals” of relationship crises in advance, and thus were able to prevent various forms of deprivation and poverty.
by Luigino Bruni
published in Il Messaggero di Sant'Antonio on 03/09/2025
I have always been struck by the episode of the Wedding at Cana, which the Gospel of John (2:1-12) places at the beginning of Jesus' public life. It is a first sign that occurs during a wedding feast and concerns wine. It takes place in a private home, not in the temple—this too is the radical secularity of Jesus and Christianity. Jesus, despite being a ‘mobile’ teacher, a ‘son of man’ without a nest or a den, loved houses. Jesus frequented many houses, right up until the last Passover, at the supper on the upper floor of a friend's house.
The ‘miracle’ at Cana concerns wine, an important ingredient in celebrations, both yesterday and today. However, it is less essential to life than bread. But it serves to tell us that we do not die only from lack of bread: we also die from a lack of celebrations, relationships, dancing, excess, waste, and the ability to celebrate certain special days – at least one day, at least on our wedding day. In that festive context, a sign of the new economy of abundance and excess, perhaps the wedding of a relative of Jesus' family, the rabbi of Nazareth begins to reveal himself. And there was no better environment.
It was precisely in that context that Jesus' mother saw a lack, sensed the beginning of a crisis, an unexpected and serious event that could spoil the party. And she saw it before anyone else, before her son and the disciples. This fact tells us something important. In the societies of yesterday, and in part also of today (where everything has become more complex, but some traces of the past remain), women had a sixth sense, a special aptitude for reading in advance the “weak signals” of relational crises, and thus they were able to prevent various forms of deprivation and poverty. Women took care of the home: their oikonomia was different from that of their men. They were the guardians of relationships, and therefore of equality, fraternity, and inclusion. Food was not entrusted to strength or merit, but to the fact of being sons, daughters, elders, family members, or passing guests. Men brought home bread (and wine), women took care of it, and made sure that those provisions became bread, life, for everyone, especially for the weakest, that those dead things (animals, vegetables, and fruit) could live again in shared meals and give life to everyone. An exercise they have been doing for millennia.
Caring for relationships was their specialization. Women saw, and see, relationships first, and resources second, and they see and manage resources in function of relationships. And so they reveal to us a central aspect of the principle of subsidiarity: goods are of help (subsidiary) to relationships, and not vice versa, as a certain capitalist economy has thought, and thinks, more and more. At Cana, Mary also saw, and she saw more and first. Mary saw a problem, took care of it, and tried to solve it. Her son Jesus began his mission thanks to a concrete act of love by his mother, who was not interested in the theological times established by the Trinity, or at least was less interested in them than in taking care of a wedding feast for family friends. A wonderful beginning to the most beautiful story in the world.
