By Phoebe Farag Mikhail

In a happy coincidence, yesterday the United States remembered its modern martyr, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This year the observance fell on the same day as a fourth century Egyptian Christian martyr, St. Dimiana (also spelled Demiana). And this year on the Coptic Orthodox Church’s liturgical calendar, they both fall on the Feast of the Wedding of Cana of Galilee. To me, these dates aligned with a message about beauty, love, and joy.

While the world watched several royal weddings over the past few years, the Wedding of Cana of Galilee might be the most talked about wedding in history. This was that wedding when Jesus turned water into wine. As His first recorded miracle, it seems odd that it would be changing water into wine, as opposed to, say, blindness to sight, or perhaps raising someone from the dead. And, what’s the big deal if a wedding runs out of wine? This is perhaps the least utilitarian miracle of them all.

And for that reason it’s my favorite, for ultimately this is a miracle of joy. In the words of St. Cyril of Alexandria, “Christ both … aids them by miracles and fills up that which was lacking to their joy.” Their invitation to Christ in their midst opened the doors of both their wedding party and their married life to the joy of His presence. More than this, the promise of this miracle is joy for all of us – joy, not just satisfaction. Abundant life, not just living.

Saturday night’s Super Blood Wolf Lunar Eclipse was evidence of God’s abundance, the joy He wants for us. He didn’t just create the universe with utility in mind, but with beauty. The sight of that breathtaking reddish moon was a divine gift – a moment of joy in the midst of this January’s paralyzing cold.

The cold is not what else is paralyzing us here in the United States. Over the past week, the news media and social media have erupted in rage over an incident during a march in Washington, DC. I saw my friends posting their outrage – some about the foolish actions of the high school students, some about how the media has portrayed them as provoking a confrontation when another group had done so, and all assuming that our online discussions on the matter or our collective outrage will make change.

We are paralyzed by the assumption that our online discussions and debates will actually create change – and Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday reminds us that no change has happened in this way. While public criticism might highlight a problem, positive change will not occur by simply sitting on our computers and commenting on videos. We will make change when we work together as a movement, taking concrete action, and building each other up instead of seeking any opportunity to tear each other down.

“Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others,” Dr. King is often quoted as saying. Indeed, that’s not just the surest way to be happy, but the surest way to experience joy. Dr. King died seeking happiness for others, our modern martyr now experiencing eternal joy.

St. Dimiana was also a martyr, who died standing up for her faith and her right to live the ascetic life she chose. Considered the mother of female monasticism in Egypt, she refused to marry and requested instead that her father build her a place to live outside the city to live in community with other women who were drawn to this way of life as well. They chose love for God above all else, until the end. Both she and the forty women who lived with her were killed by the Emperor Diocletian during the Great Persecution. According to the story, the sisters were offered an escape from death if they renounced their faith—they chose to stand their ground. A monastery in Egypt stands to this day at the place where St. Dimiana lived and was buried along with her sisters. They too are experiencing eternal joy with the God who gives abundant life.

In order to accept certain death by resisting the Emperor and standing up for their faith, St. Dimiana and the Forty Virgins must have seen the same mountaintop that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. saw. They all knew they faced danger and threats for resisting oppression and standing up for what they believed. Yet they continued their fight of faith and accepted martyrdom as a result. On that mountaintop they must have seen the same God who formed nature in its excessive beauty, Christ who turned water into wine. Their joy is full, and now they call for us to follow, not necessarily to martyrdom, but certainly to this excessive beauty, this excessive giving, this excessive love.

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