What did Our Lord do when thus addressed? We are told, “Jesus said to her, “Woman, what is it to Me and to thee? My hour is not yet come.’” Some non-Catholics in their strange fervor against Our Lady give these words a bad significance. Some of them contend that He meant, “Why don’t you mind your own business?” And others go furthers and assert that the words mean, “What have you got to do with Me?” And then they point to the use of the word “Woman” as indicating an insulting of her, a showing how little He thought of her!
      That is unnatural on their part, and it is incomprehensible. It just proves the miserable things that can happen when one withdraws form the care of Mother Church and sets up business as one’s own Pope. Because you will appreciate that in the effort to lower her they have not hesitated to lower Him, and to represent Him as wanting in respect for His own most loving Mother. They should remember that it is He who bids people to honor their fathers and their mothers.
      Actually that particular phrase, “What is it to Me and to thee?” is a common one in Hebrew. It means exactly what it says, that is to say, “What has this to do with us?” Where is the insult there? On the contrary, as many of the saints have pointed out, the phrase pointedly associates Mary to Our Lord’s own work. Therefore the Lord does not offend against the Fourth Commandment in the way that non-Catholics, or some of them, infer.
      It will be noted also that St. John, who records this episode, can only have learned of the conversation from Our Lady herself, because it is plain that the conversation was a private one between Jesus and Mary alone. The Holy Ghost only reveals to the Evangelist where there is no human agency to tell. But Mary was there to tell that and other things, and therefore there was no need for any other revelation.
      Moreover that word, “Woman”, contrary to that depreciatory suggestion, has no unpleasant sound or sense. In Hebrew, as in Greek, the word was a stately address containing the notion of “noblewoman.” Non-Catholic scholars know that just as well as we do: and why, therefore. Should they stoop so low?
      But there is far more at stake in the use of that word than even the most respectful address. That word touches infinite chords. I have described Cana as an epochal moment. It is linked with other similar moments. Reflect that in the first promise of Redemption the word used is “Woman”: “I will set enmities between thee and the woman.’ (Gen. Iii. 15). Now again at Cana the word is used. It represents unquestionably a pointing back to that “beginning of prophecies.” Jesus was declaring (not so much for her whom He was addressing as for the written word, the New Testament, of which she later on would be a source) that she was the Woman of Prophecy who would crush the serpent’s head, and that He was her seed by whom that Redemption would be wrought.
      Three years later that word will appropriately be on His lips again. It will be on the cross when Redemption is consummated: “Woman, behold thy son (St. John xix. 26). Again that vital linking up of Mary with the long chain of prophecies, and to the Plan outlined in Eden! To miss the significance of that word is to risk misunderstanding the mission of her on whom God has been pleased to pivot His Plan.

Next: “My Hour is not yet come”