Reflections on Scripture • 07-08-23 - Saturday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Gospel Matthew 9:14-17 <br />The disciples of John approached Jesus and said, "Why do we and the Pharisees fast much, but your disciples do not fast?" Jesus answered them, "Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away <br />from them, and then they will fast. No one patches an old cloak with a piece of unshrunken cloth, for its fullness pulls away from the cloak and the tear gets worse. People do not put new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the <br />skins are ruined. Rather, they pour new wine into fresh wineskins, and both <br />are preserved.”<br /> <br />Reflection<br />Jesus was a real problem for the Pharisees because he kept breaking the law, and they didn't understand it, and what Jesus is trying to say to them in response, in this gospel, is what they have to do is not understand what he's doing, understand who he is. He is inaugurating a whole new image of who God is. It's like having a whole new beginning to everything you know about religion. <br />That's what he wants. A whole new being. They can be filled with new wine, the wine and forgiveness and compassion. It can't be fit into the old structure of the law and condemnation.<br /> <br />Closing Prayer<br />Father, we have the same problem that the Pharisees had with so many of your teachings, and when we find someone who opens our eyes to something that doesn't fit into the way we thought God was working in the world, it takes grace, your grace, to change us. It's not our understanding that's going to get us to the place we need to go. It is the transforming work of the Holy Spirit, create a new heart, a new receptacle to everything that you are in our hearts. And we ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.