Saturday, July 6, 2002
13th Week in Ordinary Time
1st Reading: Am 9:11-15
Gospel: Mt 9:14-17
The disciples of John came to him with the question, "How is it
that we and the Pharisees fast on 
many
occasions, but not your disciples?"
Jesus answered them, "How can you expect wedding guests to mourn
as long as the bridegroom is with them? Time will come when the bridegroom
will be taken away from them, then they will fast.
No one patches an old coat with a piece of unshrunken cloth, for the patch
will shrink and tear an even bigger hole in the coat. Besides you don't
put new wine in old wineskins. If you do, the wineskins will burst and
the wine be spilt. No, you put new wine in fresh skins; then both are
preserved."
Commentary
To see Jesus in a joyful mood accompanied by a group of disciples who are not fasting was unacceptable to the Pharisees and the disciples of John the Baptist. It was not the way they expected him to be. When the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar emphasized human aspects in the life of Jesus, people with more "serious" understanding about Jesus felt terribly bad and full of anger. Anger, not because the production was offensive to Christ, but because it offended their image of Christ. As humans, we have the unconscious tendency to consider absolute whatever has been good in our past experiences. Our peculiar world view and particular sensitivity may also grow old and get dry, inflexible, like the wineskins mentioned in the gospel. The new wine of a living God surprises us, challenging us to a new life.