In today’s Gospel, Luke 5: 33-39, the Scribes and
Pharisees are again at odds with Jesus. Nothing Jesus does is right for them.
This time, they confront him because his disciples do not fast or offer prayers
like their disciples do. The Scribes and
Pharisees do not recognize that something New is taking place, that the
Messianic Kingdom has arrived, that the Old Covenant is being replaced by the
New Covenant. As Jesus’ proclamation of
the New Kingdom spreads by his healing of all who are brought to him with every
kind of disease and demons are commanded to leave the area, and unjust
practices are challenged, the Scribes
and Pharisees speed up their attacks on Jesus, trying to trick him, looking for
ways to trap Him and find cause to put him to death. They do not want their world of laws and
rituals that have been in vogue for hundreds of years to be disturbed. They do not want any change in their rituals
or in their lives. As Jesus says at the
end of this Gospel: “…[N]o one who has been drinking old wine desires new, for
he says, ‘The old is good.’”
The same scenario is occurring
in the Catholic Church. There are people
among the laity, the clergy and women and men religious who vehemently cling to
past rituals or traditions from of old, who do not want their lives disturbed
by change of any kind. The past, for
some, is enshrined in gold.
How willing are you and I
to accept the inevitability of change in
the Catholic Church, in the way we express our faith, in the externals
of our religion, in ritual and sacramental changes; in short, in the way God
works? How open are we to the changes that inevitably occur in our personal lives,
our family lives, our religious community, our parish?
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