Friday in the 22nd Week Of Ordinary Time, September 3, 2021

Luke 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.’”

The scribes and the Pharisees rightly saw the lack of fasting on the part of the Apostles as a sign that the Lord’s ministry differed markedly from theirs.  This should have led them to realize that Jesus differed markedly from them and also from John the Baptist.  It differed in substance and purpose.  In substance, it differed in that Jesus was the Son of God and not a mere human being whose teaching authority came either from Jerusalem or from the teacher’s own ability to convince others that he taught the truth.  It differed in purpose, since Jesus came as the Messiah to lead the people to true freedom, and the Pharisees and John the Baptist only taught that the Messiah was coming.

“Can you make the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?”  Jesus speaks of himself as the Bridegroom and of his Apostles as “wedding guests” and as “the bridegroom’s friends”.  He, indeed, is the true Bridegroom, the Model for all bridegrooms to follow.  He is not like a bridegroom; other men can only be bridegrooms to the extent that they participate in him as Bridegroom.  He possesses perfectly in himself all the virtues which pertain to his office as Bridegroom, particularly in his willingness to die for his Bride, the Church: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church and delivered himself up for her” (Ephesians 5, 25).  While the wedding banquet is taking place at the Bride’s home, this world, there is eating and drinking.  When the Bridegroom “is taken away”, and is on the road, leading his Bride to her new home, that of her Husband, there is no eating and drinking.  But when the Groom brings the Bride into his house, they enjoy a new banquet, and the rejoicing extends into eternity.  Already, the Lord Jesus looks forward to the last day of the world, when the Church, his Bride, “the Holy City” and “the new Jerusalem” would come down out of heaven from God, “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Revelation 21, 5).

“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.”. Here, the Lord offers wisdom in the form of a familiar domestic situation.  He adds another to strengthen his point: “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.”  He tells the solution to the wineskin problem: “Rather, new wine must be poured into fresh wineskins.”  He is speaking here of the grace necessary for faith.  The old wineskins are torn: the old covenant has broken down due to the people failing, through their immoral behavior, to keep their promise.  But a “patch” of new cloth is useless; what is necessary is an entirely new wineskin for the new wine: grace transforms a person so that he can believe and live in harmony with God.  

“And no one who has been drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’ ”  This would seem to be a saying separate from the parable of the wineskins and Luke includes it here simply because he has just recounted how Jesus was speaking of wine.  In this particular passage, “the old wine” is “Tradition”.  Tradition is preferable to novelty.  Tradition is governed from within itself and offers safety and certainty.  Tradition is not static; it grows, but incrementally, and it does not go off in arbitrary directions.  Novelty is based on whimsy and is nothing if not arbitrary.  The Lord Jesus worked within the authentic Jewish tradition, whereas the Pharisees had departed from it with their inauthentic beliefs and practices, which the Lord calls, on one occasion, “the traditions of men”.  Living within the Tradition of the Holy Church, which succeeds and fulfills Jewish tradition, we rest secure in knowing that we have all that is necessary for our salvation.