Receiving the Fullness of Truth: New Wineskins
Saturday, July 5th Readings Reflection: Saturday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
“Neither do they put new wine into old bottles. otherwise the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish. But new wine they put into new bottles: and both are preserved” (Mt 9:17 DRB). These words from Jesus in today’s Gospel can seem confusing, and indeed there are many insights that we can glean from this one statement, as can be seen from the writings of the Church Fathers. However, I would like to focus on one early commentary that saw this line as an analogy for Jesus’ disciples, an analogy that can also be extended to ourselves in our spiritual lives.
The commentator wrote that Jesus is here referring to “His disciples, who were not yet perfectly renewed. The new wine is the fulness [sic] of the Holy Spirit, and the depths of the heavenly mysteries, which His disciples could not then bear; but after the resurrection they became as new skins, and were filled with new wine when they received the Holy Spirit into their hearts” (Catena Aurea).
At this point in their conversions, Jesus’ disciples had not yet received the fullness of truth, which occurred on Pentecost when they received the Holy Ghost and understood Christ’s life and ministry in light of His Passion, Death, and Resurrection. While the disciples were blessed to know Jesus during His public ministry, they lacked an advantage that we today possess, namely, the ability to view Jesus’ earthly life through the lens of His Passion and Resurrection. Everything Jesus said and did was directed toward His Passion and Resurrection, but until these events occurred in time, His disciples did not fully understand why He had come.
Many believed that Christ had come to bring about an earthly liberation for the Jewish people and that He would establish a glorious earthly kingdom. They were thus disappointed when He humbly submitted to His Passion and Death, suffering an apparent defeat on the shameful Cross. These disciples were like old wine skins who would burst if filled with new wine without first becoming renewed by the Holy Ghost.
However, as Catholics living after Christ’s earthly ministry has concluded, we know that His Passion and Death is the culmination of His earthly life, the reason for which the Incarnation took place. Through the Sacraments of Initiation—Baptism, Confirmation, and the Holy Eucharist—we receive sanctifying grace and the outpouring of the Holy Ghost into our souls, transforming us into children of God and enabling us to receive the fullness of truth as it has been revealed by God and safeguarded by the Catholic Church. As long as we are in the state of grace, our souls are like new wineskins, capable of receiving the truth and growing deeper in our faith through an ever-growing knowledge of God.
May we always remain in the state of grace so that, like new wineskins, we may be spiritually alive and capable of accepting everything we must believe for our salvation.
