New Wine and Old Wineskins: Grace and Spiritual Death

Friday, September 6th Readings Reflection: Friday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

In today’s Gospel, Jesus uses the analogy of new wine and old wineskins to exhort His disciples to change their hearts and follow the New Law. The Fathers of the Church understood the old wineskins to refer to the Mosaic Law and the covenant that God had made with His people through the Prophets. This covenant served to prepare the Jews for the Messiah, Who would establish a new law and covenant for both Jews and Gentiles alike. However, as we know from the Gospels and New Testament Epistles, many of the Jews refused to accept Jesus as the Messiah. These people believed “[t]he old is good,” as Jesus says in today’s Gospel.

The message of today’s Gospel also applies to us today. In order to be truly Catholic—not merely in name but authentically in our way of life—we must recognize the sinfulness of our former ways and continually seek the conversion of heart necessary to live out the New Law of Christ. As St. Paul wrote, “[P]ut off…the old man, who is corrupted according to the desire of error…[a]nd put on the new man, who according to God is created in justice and holiness of truth” (Eph 4:22, 24 DRB). If we refuse to set aside our former ways, to continually reject sin and open our hearts more fully to God’s grace, we are not worthy of Christ’s new covenant.

St. Bede the Venerable wrote, “[T]o every soul which is not yet renewed, but goes on still in the old way of wickedness, the sacraments of new mysteries ought not to be given.” Such souls, he continued, are “not able to perceive the sweetness of spiritual words,” for they are like old wineskins that are unable to contain new wine.

When we are baptized, the priest asks us (or our godparents who answer on our behalf, when we are baptized as infants) to renounce Satan and profess our faith in the teachings of the Catholic Church. Such a renunciation and profession of faith is necessary in order to receive the new life of sanctifying grace in our souls through the waters of Baptism. Without such a renunciation, our souls are like old wineskins that burst when filled with new wine.

However, this renunciation must not end at our Baptisms, for we know that Baptism does not guarantee our salvation. As long as we are alive on this earth, we are engaged in a continual battle against evil. When we have the grave misfortune to fall into mortal sin, our souls become old wineskins again, and we are unable to receive any grace in our soul without first receiving the forgiveness of our sins in the Sacrament of Penance. For this reason, we cannot receive Holy Communion unless our souls are in the state of grace.

Receiving Holy Communion when we are spiritually dead through mortal sin is a grave sin of sacrilege. Our spiritually dead souls are old wineskins that require the healing of God’s forgiveness in the Sacrament of Penance to become new and clean again. May we never take the state of our souls for granted, and may we always turn to the Sacrament of Penance immediately if we ever have the misfortune to commit a mortal sin, so that we may not lose a moment of containing within us the new wine of sanctifying grace.

Wine and wineskins. Public domain, from a medieval cookbook.