NEW WINE

Monday in the Second Week of Ordinary Time
Mk 2:18-22

Wherever you go around the world, wine always symbolizes joy, celebration, joyful feast. We celebrate the joys of life with a feast of wine. Perhaps, ironic though it seems, this is also the reason why people who seek for the joys in life turn to wine. They drink wine to quench their thirst for joy, consolation, relief from pain. Unfortunately though, wine does not really give them joys they desperately search for. Wine celebrates the joy that life already has; it does not give the joy that life does not have.

When people fast, they drink only water not wine. However, one does not need to be sad when fasting. In fact, Jesus admonishes us that when we fast, we should not look glum. No one should know that we are fasting, according to Him. Could this be the reason why some people came to Jesus and seemingly protested why His disciples do not fast while the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast? They just did not know that the disciples of Jesus also fast because the disciples of Jesus were not showy with their pious acts.

However, if the disciples of Jesus were really not fasting, they did not have to be forced to do it. Fasting is indeed a praiseworthy pious practice, but it does not guarantee deep spirituality and true religion. It is not fasting in itself that makes us holy just as it is not wine that give joy to life but life that makes wine a symbol of joy.

Jesus purified and revolutionized man’s idea of holiness. He brings new wine and unless it is poured into new wineskins, as He Himself says in the gospel today, it is lost.