January 21, 2019
Mon. Second Week
in Ordinary Time
1st Reading:
Heb. 5: 1-10
Gospel: Mark 2: 18-22
D@iGITAL EXPERIENCE
In the time of Jesus, wine were bottled using dried skins of animals. New wine, being more acidic, had to be bottled using new skins. Old skins, being more sensitive to acidity, had to be filled only with the less acidic old wine.
Jesus and the Pharisees were as incompatible as new wine and old wineskins. The Pharisees found Jesus too acidic. In one Gospel passage he dined with high profile public sinners such as the tax collectors. Jesus justified his action, saying that just as sick people need the doctor, so also sinners need him more than the righteous ones. This notwithstanding, his enemies did not stop digging further into his dining escapades with sinners.
In today’s Gospel reading they criticized Jesus’ apparent intemperance, comparing him with John the Baptist who fasted on locusts and wild honey in the desert. Jesus took the occasion as a chance to announce that the time of John the Baptist was already over and it was now the time to rejoice because the bridegroom had arrived. He used this metaphor of marriage to explain the new relationship he was trying to establish with humanity. The time of preparation thru fasting (John the Baptist’s time) was over and it was now the time to rejoice because the kingdom of God was at hand. To fast on food at such a time for rejoicing was as ridiculous as pouring new wine into old wineskin.
This Gospel passage reminds us that God has set time for everything so that we may place all things at their proper time. Are we in step with God’s time? Many people are unhappy because they swim against the tide of God’s wisdom. They think they are more intelligent than God and so they always find God’s ways “acidic” as the Pharisees found Jesus’ ways. Even if God were to force his grace upon them, they’ d burst like old wineskins filled with new wine. – (Atty.) Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles Jr. D.M.
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