Those words open the second chapter of St John’s Gospel in the Bible. In this chapter Christ Jesus begins his healing ministry. “And the third day,” John records, “there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee” (John 2:1).
On this day, Christ Jesus performs his earliest recorded miracle. At these nuptials, he turns large pots of water into wine. You could say that it is here that Jesus sets the stage for his ministry. He is about to turn the water of human experience into the wine of spiritual understanding.
As I see it, John was not telling us that Jesus’ ministry started on the third day of the month or on the third day of the week. Spiritually interpreted, the number “three” stands for divine completeness and perfection, for God’s omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience. Not confined to the limits of time, but signifying resurrection—awake and alert to the present possibilities of immortal man, forever freed from the mortal senses.
