GOSPEL POWER l SEPTEMBER 2, 2022 - FRIDAY

22nd Week in Ordinary Time

Gospel: Lk 5:33-39 

33The Pharisees and scribes said to Jesus, “John’s disciples, like the  disciples of the Pharisees, frequently fast and pray, but your disciples  eat and drink.” 34Jesus said to them, “You cannot make wedding  guests fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you? 35The days  will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and  then they will fast in those days.” 36He also told them a parable: “No  one tears a piece from a new garment and sews it on an old garment;  otherwise the new will be torn, and the piece from the new will  not match the old. 37And no one puts new wine into old wineskins;  otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and  the skins will be destroyed. 38But new wine must be put into fresh  wineskins. 39And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine,  but says, ‘The old is good.’” 

Jesus embodies God’s totally new way of dealing with the  world. He reveals the divine identity in a surprisingly  intimate way symbolized by table-fellowship and wedding  banquet, marked by joyful celebration. But precisely because the  revelation is totally new and unexpected, the disciples of John and  the Pharisees miss the signs that herald the arrival of the Messiah they  have been waiting for. They remain stuck in the period of preparation,  in which fasting and penance serve as appropriate expressions of  waiting. But the old wineskins of their religious observances can no  longer support the dynamism of the new wine of the Kingdom. They  need new eyes to see, new mindset to grasp, and new heart to accept  that in the person of an ordinary carpenter, God is present in the  midst of his people. 

Lord Jesus, burst the old wineskins of our stubborn attachment to prejudices  and biases that cause us to resist the new wine of the Kingdom. Amen.