The gospel For Friday, the 22nd week in Ordinary Time was taken from Luke, 5th chapter 33, 9th verse. The scribes and Pharisees said to Jesus, the disciples of John the Baptist fast often and offer prayers. And the disciples of the Pharisees do the same, but yours eat and drink. Jesus answered them, can you make the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come, and when the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they will fast in those days. And he also told them a parable.
No one tears a piece from a new cloak to patch an old one. Otherwise he will tear the new, and the piece from it will not match the old cloak. Likewise, no one pours new wine into old wineskins, otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled and the skins will be ruined. Rather, new wine must be poured into fresh wineskins. And no one who has been drinking old wine desires new. For he says, the old is good.
Jesus opened a new world to all of us. And it was very difficult for those who heard it for the first time. And what Jesus is pointing out in this parable is that what first has to happen before you can embrace the teaching of Jesus that was so radically different than the teaching of the temple is you have to be changed. Something has to shift. You have to become new. And that’s exactly what happened when he died on the cross.
It’s called redemption. It’s called a new way, a new openness to everything that we never imagined could be. That’s the gift of grace. Please take a few moments to reflect upon these images, and then I will close with a prayer. Father, give us patience. It’s not easy to change something.
We’ve always believed when something new comes into the world, something new comes into our life. And we know it’s true. But it’s not what we always did or how we always saw something. It takes time to change. There’s no rush in our evolution of consciousness. It just needs to be moving, always in a direction, away from illusion and more and more into truth.
And we ask this in Jesus name, Amen.