The Wineskins

We read, in Matthew 9, 14-17, the mysterious words of The Lord Jesus regarding patching clothes and pouring wine into wineskins.  Even today these words are hard to understand.  The eighth century monk Rabanus Maurus provides his interpretation in one of his homilies:

"What he is saying is this: that until someone is reborn and, laying aside the 'old' man, he puts on the 'new' man through my Passion, he is not able to carry out my more severe commandments of fasting and continence, lest he lose even the great faith he seems to have now, through austerity.  He provides two examples: old and new clothing and wineskins.  The 'old' we ought to understand as the scribes and the Pharisees.  We should understand the new cloth and the new wine as the commandments of the Gospel which the Jews cannot bear lest a greater 'tear' be made.  Such was also the case with the Galatians, who wanted to mix the commandments of the Gospel with the commandments of the law -- putting their new wine into the old wineskins.  But the Apostle said to them: 'O senseless Galatians!  Who has bewitched you so that you do not obey the truth?' (Galatians 4, 1).  The word of the Gospel is to be enjoined by the Apostles, not by the scribes and the Pharisees, who, corrupted by the traditions of the elders, are not able to maintain the purity of the commandments of Christ.  For, the 'new' has virginal purity of the soul, unpolluted by any stain of earlier sin.  The 'old' is the filth of the soul which is subject to the desire for many things.  It is necessary for the filth of one's vices and the 'old age' of sin to be washed by penance, so that with the assistance of the grace of The Lord's power, obtained by Christ, knowledge and spiritual teaching may be conferred on the soul."