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I liked the play on miracles.
At the beginning of the feast there is a specific reference to the wedding at Cana, where Jesus performs his first miracle by turning water into wine:
“They were sitting down to a meal, well, so had people done at the wedding of Cana. And grace has chosen to manifest itself there, in the very wine, as fully as anywhere.”
Then, the ante is upped by describing an act of the Dean - walking over ice to a fishing village. This suggests another of the well-known New Testament miracles, Jesus walking on water to the fisherman-disciples.
“A Sister on the other side of the table opened on the subject of strange happenings which had taken place while the Dean was still amongst his children, and which one might venture to call miracles.”
Then the Dean's disciples perform a reverse miracle at Cana - they transform wine into water:
“This time the Brothers and Sisters knew that what they were given to drink was not wine, for it sparkled. It must be some kind of lemonade. The lemonade agreed with their exalted state of mind and seemed to lift them off the ground, into a higher and purer sphere.”
Adding to the irony, we have already been told several times that the Dean's disciples were proud of their ability to separate illusion from reality.
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