New Wine in New Wineskins
Homily of February 27, 2000
Father Brian Joyce

Some things never change, especially around religious practice. They ask Jesus, "Why don't your disciples fast? Why don't you do things the way we used to do things?" They ask, "Why don't you give up meat on Friday like you used to? Why don't you have a communion rail like we used to in Church? Why don't you have candles? When I was growing up, in Church we had lots of candles. Why don't we have candles in Church? Why don't you have the tabernacle in the center? Why is it off to the side, or in most Catholic churches today, in a different building and in a different place? Why don't you do things the way you used to?"

Now, to questions like this about religious practice, there's always a short term answer and a big-picture, long term answer. And Jesus does this. They ask Him why your disciples don't fast. He gives them a short term answer first. He says, "Well, you know, it's like being in a wedding reception. You're not going to stop eating and drinking 'til the bride and groom leave. Right? You're going to keep it up as long as you can." But, then He gives a long-term answer. He says, "You know, you can't put new wine into old skins. You always have to put new wine into today's skins, into fresh skins." It's a long-term answer.

Short-term answers: Why don't we give up meat on Friday like we used to? Well, we still fast in solidarity with one another and the poor, at times like Ash Wednesday and Good Friday during Lent. But, the point of fasting is to change our hearts. And maybe in another culture and another generation, if the whole town and the whole culture and the whole country had to fast, whether they liked it or not, maybe it changed their hearts. I don't know. But we know that in our century, in our culture, in our generation, fasting by mandate, en masse and by rote doesn't change anybody's heart. You have to do it personally. You have to make your own decisions.

Communion rails: The short-term answer is, "Well, if you take a house and put a communion rail in the middle of it, it's like two rooms. We got one room where all the unholy people are and we got another room where all the ho....(There's only three of them, at most!), where all the holy people are. And we're supposed to be a single Eucharistic people gathered around the table of the Lord." That's the short-term answer.

When it comes to lights and candles in Church, I grew up with lots of candles in Church. The short-term answer is, "Ask your insurance agent."

The tabernacle? The short-term answer is that the tabernacle was invented for emergencies. It was invented so that if somebody was sick and dying and Mass wasn't going on and we couldn't bring communion to them, we had invented a place where the host could be kept for sick and dying emergencies. And also, over the years, it became a place for private prayer, private devotion. Once upon a time, four hundred years ago, when there was a huge argument in the Church about the presence of Jesus in the tabernacle, it seemed to make sense to move it to the center and say, "We're going to make a statement, this year, during this debate." But, we know that today that debate's over and, to put the tabernacle in the center of a Church not only contradicts the rhythm of the Mass where we are gathered and the bread and wine is not yet consecrated, but it also gives the impression that we gather in a temple of private prayer and private devotion when we're supposed to be in a gathering place of all God's people around one Eucharist. Those are the short-term answers.

But there are bigger and long-term questions and answers. For a living, believing, traditional community, values and wisdom and tradition is passed on only when our practice regularly changes to best express and best fit today, or as Jesus put it, you can't put new wine in old wine skins. You need fresh wine skins every day. We have to make kind of an interesting choice. And I don't know if you can visualize this because it makes more sense in print, but if you think of the word "tradition" (We belong to a church that honors "tradition.") there's a small "t" which just means "customs." You know, we have the custom of coming to Mass late. That's one of our traditions, right? OK? That's just small "t." But the big "T" is the tradition of our wisdom that we don't want to lose. The choice we end up making, is our tradition going to be the dead faith, dead and buried, of living people or is it going to be living faith, living, of dead people, of those who went before us? That's what it should be.

Pope John XXIII said that, as a Church, we're not called to be curators of a museum, holding onto precious old items, but we're called to something much messier. We're called to be a living family, passing on values and wisdom and beliefs for today. And, this is how it works. The way it works is specific practices and concrete activities and expressions of our spirituality and of our religion are always necessary. We need that, but they are always, and always have been, and always will be, subject to change. Think about it. Novenas, rosaries, church architecture, church music, the way we celebrate confessions, the way we celebrate Mass, rules and regulations, styles of Church leadership, exercise of authority, all of those are always subject to change. What is not subject to change is our values, our wisdom and our core beliefs. Although, watch carefully and you'll notice even our core beliefs and our wisdom and our values look and feel a little different from age to age because they are not supposed to be left on a shelf to get dusty, but they should be applied to new situations, to address current questions, and to find their flesh in daily lives.

You know, as a parish priest working with people on their spiritual journey, I worry sometimes because I find that there are good Christians and good Catholics who are struggling to make their faith a living thing and they end up feeling guilty, because they are struggling to do that they feel they're cheating. They feel they're coming up short. They feel that they are picking and choosing. They get accused of being Selective Christians or Cafeteria Catholics or even accused of rejecting the "one true faith." And what they are really doing is following today's Gospel and taking the necessary steps to put new wine in fresh, today's wine skins.

There's a very holy and great theologian in the 19th century, you probably know the name, Cardinal John Henry Newman, and he taught that to have real faith you need two things, and you need them both. One he called "notional assent." It surprises people but he said, "There are some things in our Creed, some things that we list, that really in my life don't make a lot of sense to me. I just say, 'OK. Whatever. You know, if you say so, but I'm not going to think about it.' " We just give notional assent to some things. And then there are other things we give real assent to. We say, "This matters. This makes sense to me. This makes a difference in my life, or it should." And we need both to be real believers.

Over the last three weekends, we've looked at some major figures of the Millennium. And what we've looked at is how did they put together the ancient faith in a living way in their generation? The first one we looked at was Hildegarde. And how did Hildegarde put together her unique sense of the presence of God and her century's music and art and medicine and its politics and its Church controversy. How did she do that? Then we looked at Francis and Clare. How did they take the ancient call to be "poor in spirit?" Poverty and simplicity, how did they put that to work in their century, which was one of commercialism, of exploding wealth, of urbanization and of exploding media and new art? And then we looked at Dorothy Day. And how did she take the values of the Gospel and apply it to the labor movement, to homelessness and to the Second World War, and the Korean War, and the Vietnam War?

For Hildegard, her experience of God was a refreshing green presence of God. And she went through her life, and she lived, we know, into her eighties, most of the time accepting rules and regulations and authority gladly. But, finally, at one point, she ignored all that and she picked a fight, when she found it absolutely necessary, when she found that what was going on was contrary to her experience of God as a refreshing compassionate God.

And then Francis and Clare came along and they wanted to live a life of poverty, and there was a Catholic way of doing that. You go off and be a hermit. And they said, "That doesn't work, doesn't work for our century." And they banded people together in communities and communes that went traveling and preaching and shared a common poor life. And the Franciscan movement continues to band people together that way today.

And Dorothy Day founded a house, the Catholic Worker House in New York, a newspaper and a movement dedicated to justice and to compassion. And she was often in conflict with the tried and true, the accepted and the authoritative way of being a good Catholic.

What are we talking about? New wine needs fresh wine skins. Otherwise, it's stale wine, and we're not called to that. How do we be a people of tradition and a living faith. I'd suggest a few steps. One is that we never lightly or easily dismiss the old, even if we don't appreciate it or understand it, lest something very precious and very central be lost or misplaced. Secondly, we keep trying to seek out the true meaning and value behind the words we use, the things we say, the way we celebrate. And finally, we try to apply our wisdom and our belief, not to history and the past, but to daily life and to the present. That's what we're called to do. "It ain't easy." We do not always get it right, and often we don't agree with each other.

It's interesting, in the 70's, a very common comment that was made in both Catholic and non-Catholic newspapers was about Dorothy Day and another Catholic figure who disagreed with her in lifestyle, in politics, in opinion, and in just about everything, William F. Buckley. And the comment being made was, "Isn't it amazing that Dorothy Day and William F. Buckley, both Catholics, can go to the same church, celebrate the same Eucharist, walk down the aisle side by side and receive the same Jesus, and still be united in that even though they differ over everything else!"

The Eucharist is what holds us together and sends us forth. We don't come to the Eucharist to visit a museum or to enjoy nostalgia or to relive the past. We come to the Eucharist to be challenged and changed together by the living Word of God, to be nourished by the presence of Jesus, and then to go out to live our Faith in a very real way in the very real world. Amen.