Daily Reflection Friday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

Trust in the LORD and do good
Commit to the LORD your way
Turn from evil and do good
…For he will bring to light what is hidden in darkness

 

This is a combination of our 1st reading and the responsorial psalm. We do what we can do, and God does what God can do. And “all shall be well. And all manner of things shall be well.” (Julian)

 

In the book of Romans Paul says, “we must cooperate with the Spirit.” 

When confronted with the Gospel against our thinking we need to say, “yes” and accept the challenge and invitation to change. We call this repentance. God’s grace is free but as Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, “not cheap grace.”  He says, “it is costly because it condemns sin and justifies the sinner.”

The Gospel today requires us to open our hearts and minds to receive what is new, while at the same time treasuring the old which has already been given as a gracious gift from God.

 

Todays Gospel presents the familiar “old and new wineskins.” If you pour new wine into old wineskins it will burst. And “No one tears a piece from a new cloak to patch an old one. Otherwise, he will tear the new

and the piece from it will not match the old cloak.” 

 

When I read the last verse (39) and Scripture said “the old is good” it hit me in a new way to recognize the law is good, but we must apply a new mindset. 



The Scribes and Pharisees put so much energy into trying to trip up Jesus. They just didn’t get it. They said to Jesus, “The disciples of John the Baptist fast often and offer prayers, and the disciples of the Pharisees do the same;

but yours eat and drink.”

Eating and drinking in celebration of the Bridegroom, Jesus, Eucharist being with them among them before he is taken away. New mindset they did not have but needed then they would have understood. Maybe.

 

I am the light of the world, says the Lord;

whoever follows me will have the light of life. Jn 8:12