New Wine, New Wineskins
Monday of the 2nd Week in Ordinary Time
For us Christians, which goes first: the feasting or the fasting? Feasting and fasting are both good when these are done at the proper time with the right intention. We just celebrated the Feast of the Sto. Niño and we had lots of experiences during the past days. There were many celebrations, activities, events, both religious, cultural, and historical, that we were able to attend. Surely no one among us fasted during the past days where we were in the festive season. We celebrate and even enjoy the food prepared during these occasions. Feasting becomes not so good whenever we do it during the time of suffering and sadness, and when we don’t take into consideration our brothers and sisters who are poor and hungry. On the other hand, we do fasting on those times that we are asked to, especially during the Lenten Season, when we are asked to discipline ourselves. We can also fast in times of suffering and sadness in order to be one with our brothers and sisters who are suffering. Fasting can also become not so good when we do it only for a show.
Our Lord Jesus invites us today to have a new paradigm as His followers. He talked about putting new wine into new wineskins, which can mean that because of the change of heart, repentance that we do, we experience newness in us, thus giving us reasons to celebrate with a feast. The feasting continues on because we celebrate God’s grace of salvation to us especially through the sacraments. We are gathered this evening as a community to celebrate this banquet of love which brings all of us into unity. But as we celebrate this feast of heaven and earth in this Eucharistic table, we also remember our brothers and sisters who are experiencing hunger, crisis, and injustice. Our hearts and minds are not far away from them in this Eucharistic celebration, especially when we pray for them during the Prayers of the Faithful which leads us also to do the mission entrusted to us particularly for the poor and abandoned youth.
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