The reply of our Lord cannot fail to shock the English reader; and the very nature of the shock ought to indicate that there is something wrong with the translation.  The words sound brusque and ill-mannered; and our Lord was never that nor could be, least of all to His blessed Mother.  The dictionaries all tell us that the word translated woman is quite as well translated lady, in the sense of mistress or house mother.  There is really a shade of meaning that we have no word for.  Perhaps we best understand what it is that is missed if we recall the fact that when our Lord addressed S. Mary from the Cross He used the same word:  “Woman, behold thy son.”  In such circumstances we understand that the word on our Lord’s lips is a word of infinite tenderness.  I do not believe that we could do better than to translate it mother.  We might paraphrase our Lord’s saying thus:  “Mother, we are both concerned with the trouble of these friends; but do not be anxious; I will act when the time comes.”  His words are perfectly simple and courteous, though they do, no doubt, suggest that her anxiety is unnecessary and that He will act in due time.  If we are to understand that our Lady was suggesting that He perform a miracle, then He certainly yielded to her intercession.

Indeed, this short aside in the rejoicing of the marriage celebration is suggestive of wide reaches of thought.  It suggests, which concerns us most here, something of the mode of prayer.  Prayer is not a force exercised upon God, it is an aspiration that He answers or not as He sees fit, according as He sees our needs to be:  and if He answers, He answers in His own way and at His own time—­when His hour is come.  The intercession of the saints, and of the highest saint of all, the holy Mother, must thus be conceived as aspiration not as force.  We hardly need to remind ourselves that Blessed Mary though the highest of creatures is still a creature and infinitely removed from the uncreated God.  When we think of her prayers or the prayers of the saints as having “influence” or “power” with God, we must remember the limitations of human language.  It is quite possible through inaccurate use of language to create the impression that we believe the prayers of the saints to be prevailing with God because of some peculiar spiritual energy that belongs to them, or, still worse, because we regard them as a sort of court favourites who have special influence and can get things done that ordinary people cannot.  We need only to state the supposition to see that we do not mean it.  When we think what we mean by the influence of the prayers of the saints, of their prevailingness with God, we know that we mean that the superior value of the prayers of the saints is due to the superior nature of their spiritual insight, to their better understanding of the mind and purpose of God.  Blessed Mary is our most powerful intercessor because by her perfect sanctity she understands God better than any one else.  No educated Christian