Word to the Wise
Monday, July 7, 2008 - Thirteenth Saturday in Ordinary Time
[Genesis 27:1-5, 15-29 and Matthew 9:14-17]People do not pour new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the skins are ruined. Rather, they pour new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.
In the heady days immediately after the Second Vatican Council, when so many seemingly unchangeable realities were changing or disappearing altogether, the metaphor used by Jesus of the new wineskins saw a lot of use. It was probably a wellknown saying at the time, which he adapted to describe his mission and identity. Unquestionably he represented something that did not fit into traditional categories. The way the parable was used in those difficult post-Vatican II days often meant that anything old had to be discarded. Jesus says nothing about the value of the old wineskins or the quality of the wine. In fact, he does not seem to want the old wineskins to be lost! The motu proprio issued by Pope Benedict XVI about making the Latin rite (1962 version) more widely available could represent an interesting application of the principle in the parable. Is he pouring old wine into new wineskins? Or is he simply pouring old wine into some other old wineskins? Time will tell. I find the metaphor more interesting in terms of trying to understand many of the new technologies available, the information explosion, globalization, or the direction of religious life in our time. It's a lot of new wine trying to find its way into this increasingly older wineskin! AMEN
config
view
logs
3840.0 KB
52 ms
4
