THE WORD
1 Cor 4,1-5 / Lk 5,33-39
The scribes and Pharisees said to Jesus, “The disciples of John 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.’”
IN OTHER WORDS
The “tensions of the old and the new” reverberates in our readings today. And Jesus does not seem to choose which one is better. In fact, He favors the pouring of new wines into fresh wineskins; and yet an equal favor goes to the goodness of the old wine.
I am often confronted with the questions from some of our church-goers about Pope Francis, who to the portrayal of the media brings forth a new revolution for the church. In fact, Leonardo Boff calls for “a break with the past to bring in the new.” But it seems, the idea of revolution in itself is not really a new idea even Francis of Assisi, the Francis of old, preached the same message.
Jesus Himself came not to abolish the “old” but to fulfill it; for the heart of His message will always be the same: the God who revealed his immense love. This age-old reality does not mean living itself in the past. In fact, our first reading notes that the revelation of the “old” takes shape in the continuance of delity of those who have been entrusted by the mysteries of God.
Let us take the words of Pope Francis himself from Evangelii Gaudium 11: “Whenever we make the effort to return to the source and to recover the original freshness of the Gospel, new avenues arise, new paths of creativity open up, with different forms of expression, more eloquent signs and words with new meaning for today’s world. Every form of authentic evangelization is always ‘new.’”
There will always be tensions between the old and the new because Christian life is always marked by renewal and of constant understanding of the eternal Gospel, the ever ancient, ever new.
- Fr. Antonio Gilberto S. Marqueses, SVD | Rome, Italy
The Word in other words 2016
An annual project of Logos Publications, The WORD in Other Words Bible Diary contains daily scripture readings and reflections written by priest, brothers, and sisters of the three congregations founded by St. Arnold Janssen (the SVD, SSpS, and SSpSAP). It hopes to serve as a daily companion to readers who continually seek the correlation of the Word of God and human experience.
