Gospel
LK 5:33-39
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.’”
REFLECTION
new wine must be poured into fresh wineskins.
The more I think of it, the hermits seem to have gotten it right. Alone, communing with God, away from tempters, they had only themselves and God. Every morning, challenges await us. If not the moment we open our eyes, eventually chaos will find us.
Slept through alarm, coffee not ready, can’t find eyeglasses, news alerts about one country attacking another and figuring out the traffic jam caused by the new school built on a busy road exiting the neighborhood, late for Church and more await me daily. All the morning prayers and rosaries become “history” as I struggle to find that joy, surrender and good will found in the privacy of morning.
How ironic, in my quest to have a relationship with God I insist that it be on my terms. Happy faces, happy endings, no combatants. St Paul tells us otherwise through the humiliations and sufferings he endured: All for the sake of the Lord. You see, he truly was a servant of Jesus. Am I ? Are you?
How we handle life’s surprises and our surroundings rely on our total dependence on God. On striving to find peace, we need to change our old selves and allow God to reshape us into someone new. We have to discipline the old and allow the creation of the “new us”.
Will I let situations and people affect me to the point that I sin, or do I sit back and let the Holy Spirit show me the way ? Good change will happen if we surrender all to God.
Have a great day!
God bless you!
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