We Just Have To Change

No one patches an old cloak with a piece of unshrunken cloth,
for its fullness pulls away from the cloak and the tear gets worse.
People do not put 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."



I have to admit I never really understood what something like wineskins has to do with spirituality. Jesus tells us a bit about what happens to old wineskins when you pour new wine into them but so what?  What does that have to do with me?  

In order to understand what Jesus is telling us here, we have to know a little bit of ancient history and a little bit on the nature of wine and wineskins.  My first question was why not get around all of this trouble by putting wine in bottles?  They DID have the knowledge of how to produce glass back then and bottles were not entirely unknown, why not use them an put the wineskin makers out of business?   Well, glass was at the same time durable and fragile.  It was durable enough that it would keep wine fresh in the home but it was heavy and fragile if you wanted to take it with you on a journey. Glass was something that was precious and it took a lot of labor to make. It was not the disposable commodity that we believe it is today.  Wineskins, on the other hand, was just what was needed to take your wine with you on a journey.  They were compact, lighter than glass, stronger than glass, and they were reusable - up to a point.  Eventually, the leather dries out and becomes somewhat brittle. If you put wine that is fully fermented into the skin things would work out okay.  However, put new wine, that is a wine that was still fermenting into an old wineskin and the gasses which are a product of fermentation will stretch the old wineskin and it will break at the point of weakness and your wine will be lost.  

The old covenant was going to be replaced by the new covenant. The new wine that is the teaching of Jesus will not be safe in the old wineskins of the old covenant.  A change was needed otherwise the new covenant would be lost on those too rigid to change. 

Jesus does not ask much of us.  He asks us to become a friend to Him and to His Father. In order to do this, we need to change the way we think and the way that we live.  We need to surround ourselves with the things that point out the path we have to follow to happiness in heaven with Jesus. Our old way of thinking, that of a natural human being, has to accept the graces that God sends and we need to work to find our way to paradise. Thankfully, Jesus has given us His Church, the Church has given us the Bible, the Sacraments, and all of the inspiration that we need.  Discard your old self and do not be afraid of losing who you are. The real person inside of you is the one that wants to embrace the savior in heaven one day.  Do things that make this possible. 

Pray for the Poor Souls in Purgatory today.