In their culture, when Jesus and His disciples weren’t fasting frequently like the pious Pharisees,

anything less was considered unrighteous.

Jesus wants our minds and hearts to be like new wine skins -

open and ready to receive the new wine of the Holy Spirit.

 

 

Blessed Virgin Mary St. Maria Goretti, virgin & martyr

＊＊＊ 1st Reading ＊＊＊     

Amos 9:11-15

On that day,

I shall restore the fallen hut of David and wall up its breaches, and raise its ruined walls; and so build it as in days of old.

They shall conquer the remnant of Edom, and the neighboring nations, upon which my name has been called." Thus says Yahweh, the one who will do this.

 

Yahweh says also, "The days are coming when the plowman will overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes overtake the sower. The mountains shall drip sweet wine and all the hills shall melt.

 

I shall bring back the exiles of my people Israel; they will rebuild the desolate cities and dwell in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will have orchards and eat their fruit. I shall plant them in their own country and they shall never again be rooted up from the land which I have given them," says Yahweh your God.

 

Ps 85:9ab, 10, 11-12, 13-14 The Lord speaks of peace to his people.

 

＊＊＊ Gospel ＊＊＊      

Matthew 9:14-17

Then 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? The time will come, when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and 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. In the same way, you don't put new wine into old wine skins. If you do, the wine skins will burst and the wine will be spilt. No, you put new wine into fresh skins; then both are preserved."

 

Gospel Reflection ：

"A new wineskin."

A life changed can be likened to a new wine placed in a new wineskin. An old wineskin cannot preserve new wine. An old wineskin will burst if new wine is put in it. Similarly, if our actions still reflect our old life even if we think or claim that we have changed, our claim will not hold.

 

One of the indicators that we are merely like a new wine placed in an old wineskin is our inability to look into ourselves while we have the energy to look at other people.

 

In today's Gospel, the disciples of John the Baptist came to Jesus, posing a question with regards to fasting. They and the Pharisees, accordingly, were fasting but Jesus' disciples were not. This somehow betrayed their shallow motivation as regards the reason why they were fasting.

 

If they were convinced that fasting was helping them, there is no point as to why they would be questioning people who were not doing the things they were doing. It is our capacity to do self-introspection that will enable us to proceed with our faith journey, which is a journey toward an ongoing conversion.