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Reflection on the Gospel – Saturday, July 5, 2025
As He often did, Jesus uses examples taken from everyday life. Like a good teacher, He draws on images of sowing and harvesting, lamps, clothes, coins, or banquets to explain His message. Today’s Gospel presents two things we should not do: pour new wine into old wineskins, or patch an old cloak with a piece of new cloth. Most likely, His parents or relatives and neighbors explained these things to Him when He was a child.
Commentators usually focus more on the first example. A burst wineskin makes for a more dramatic image than a ruined cloak—and in the end, both examples seem to make the same point…
But I’m not so sure. It’s clear that an old wineskin cannot hold new wine, and that in order to receive Jesus’ message of salvation, we must be transformed. Radically—like in the conversation with Nicodemus: we must be born again by the Spirit. I think this idea excites many people: it’s revolutionary, it calls for a total change, it leaves behind outdated practices, rigid attitudes, fear of the new, and all forms of spiritual stagnation. But I wonder if we realize that this radical conversion is not simply a matter of human willpower (though our will is certainly part of it). It is, above all, a gift of the Holy Spirit. A gift we must ask for—humbly and persistently.
The example of the new cloth on an old cloak adds a different nuance: here, it’s the new that must, in a way, adapt to the old. The cloth must be soaked first so that when it is sewn on, it doesn’t pull on the worn-out fabric and tear it. I have the feeling Jesus used this second example for those of us who resist radical conversion (and let’s be honest, we all do, to some extent)—those of us who are afraid of losing what we see as valuable. Jesus invites us to let go of that fear and sincerely ask the Lord to send His Spirit, and make us new wineskins.