Jesus taught, and those who listened to Him understood Him well. Everyone who heard for the first time the words recorded in the Gospel of the Mass knew about patching clothes, and all of them, accustomed to the labors of the field, also knew what happens when new wine, drawn from recently harvested grapes, is poured into old wineskins. With these simple and well-known images, the Lord taught the deepest truths about the Kingdom He came to bring to souls: *“No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; if it is, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”*¹
Jesus declares the need to welcome His doctrine with a new, young spirit, with a desire for renewal; for just as the fermenting force of new wine bursts aged containers, so too the message that Christ brings to earth had to break all conformity, routine, and stagnation. The Apostles would remember those days with Jesus as the beginning of their true life. They did not receive His preaching as just another interpretation of the Law, but as a new life springing up within them with extraordinary momentum and requiring new dispositions.
Whenever men have encountered Jesus throughout these twenty centuries, something has arisen within them, breaking old and worn-out attitudes. Already the Prophet Ezekiel had announced² that God would grant His people another heart and give them a new spirit. Saint Bede, commenting on this Gospel passage, explains³ how the Apostles will be transformed at Pentecost and filled at once with the fervor of the Holy Spirit. This will happen later in the Church with each of its members, once they have received Baptism and Confirmation. These new wineskins—the clean and purified soul—must always be filled; *“for when empty, moth and rust consume them; grace keeps them full.”*⁴
The new wine of grace requires constantly renewed dispositions in the soul: a commitment to begin again and again on the path to holiness, which is a sign of interior youth—that youth possessed by the saints, by people in love with God. We prepare our soul to receive the divine gift of grace when we correspond to the promptings and inspirations of the Holy Spirit, as they prepare us to receive new ones and, if we have not been completely faithful, when we turn to the Lord asking Him to heal our soul. *“Take away, Lord Jesus,”* we ask Him with Saint Ambrose, *“the rottenness of my sins. While You hold me bound with the bonds of love, heal what is sick (...). I have found a Physician who lives in Heaven and pours out His medicine upon the earth. He alone can heal my wounds, for He has none; He alone can take away pain from the heart and paleness from the soul, for He knows the most hidden secrets.”*⁵
Only Your love, Lord, can prepare my soul to receive more love.
HCD