An Invitation To Read My Story - My Testimony

September 4

 

Question About Fasting
Today's Gospel: Luke 5:33-39

Today’s Gospel: Luke 5:33-39
(Questions About Fasting)

“And they said to him, 'The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink." And Jesus said to them, "Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days." He told them a parable also: "No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it upon an old garment; if he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; if he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new; for he says, `The old is good.'"

Reflection:
Old wineskins. New wineskins. Why does that even matter?

Because Jesus wasn't talking about wine. He was talking about us.

The Pharisees wanted to know why His disciples weren't fasting like everyone else, just like John's followers were. Jesus didn't argue rules with them. He gave them a picture instead. You don't tear a patch off a new coat to fix an old one. You don't pour new wine into a skin that's already dried out and stiff; it will split, and everything will spill. So then nothing can be saved.

Here's what that means for us. The Old Testament is the foundation. It is not thrown away or replaced. Every promise, every law, every prophet was pointing somewhere. You can't understand the New Testament without it; the same way you can't do calculus without knowing how to add first. I've watched this come alive in our small bible study we used to have back in Pennsylvania: how the Old and New aren't two separate stories. They're one story. The Old Testament carries the seed, and the New Testament is where it finally blooms.

The New Testament is what we were made for. Jesus didn't come to erase the law; He came to fulfill it. He came to stretch us wide enough to hold something the old skin never could: love that forgives before we deserve it, mercy that doesn't keep score, grace we didn't earn and can't repay. The old skin was rigid; it held the law, but it couldn't hold what Jesus was bringing. So, He made us new, softer, stronger, able to take the weight of real love without cracking under it.

I didn't find any of this in a commentary. I found it on my knees. Jesus wiped the slate clean because He loves us that much. He paid a debt that was never His to pay, so that we wouldn't have to carry it one more day.

So, cherish the Old Testament and grow into the New Testament. Let both keep building the faith God is building in you, one layer at a time.

Jesus is still offering new wine today, a fuller, freer, more forgiving way of loving Him than the old rules ever allowed. But new wine needs a new skin to hold it. So, ask yourself honestly: is your heart still stretched and open enough to receive it, or have parts of it hardened back into the old way of doing things?

Rosary Man Jim 🌹
Freely given. Freely shared.