Today’s Reflection
Gospel: Mt 9:14-17
July 2, 2022 | Saturday

Today’s Gospel

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.

Today’s Reflection:

People fasted for various reasons in the Scriptures not only for repentance but also for encountering the Lord or to accompany their prayers for a specific intention. And so, when Jesus was with His disciples, they did not fast because they were still together with the Lord so that Jesus said, “time will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and they will fast.” But people did not understand this, even the disciples of John and most especially the Pahrisees and the Scribes who shut their minds and hearts to the teachings of the Jesus.  Hence, Jesus used the image of new wine into new skins to describe the incompatibility of the ways of the people and His message of the Kingdom. To believe in Jesus means a new life with Him that requires the willingness to change— a change of heart. /Vulnerasti, 2022