Let go

Gospel Reflection

The disciples of John approached Jesus and said,

"Why do we and the Pharisees fast much,

but your disciples do not fast?"

Jesus answered them, "Can the wedding guests mourn

as long as the bridegroom is with them?

The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them,

and then they will fast.

No one patches an old cloak with a piece of unshrunken cloth,

for its fullness pulls away from the cloak and the tear gets worse.

People do not put new wine into old wineskins.

Otherwise the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the skins are ruined.

Rather, they pour new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved."

Matthew 9:14-17

Our gospel today can be divided into three parts - the teaching on fasting, the parable of the cloak, and the parable of the wineskins.

The first was in response to a very valid question from the disciples of John on fasting. And we are told that fasting would come when Jesus, the Bridegroom, has left his disciples, but for the meantime they feast. He also showed us that he understood the mindset of the disciples of John and the Pharisees, that they come from an old school whose beliefs are hard for them to let go. This is where the two parables would come in.

Basically the last two would mean the same thing - that in order for us to receive the beauty of the grace of God we must learn to let go of our old beliefs that we have grown comfortable with. Yes, this would be very hard, and sometimes we have to grieve over it, perhaps that is where fasting would come in,when we ask God to help us let go of the things that are holding us down and not allowing us to receive God's blessings.

So how can we receive the grace of God? We must first shed ourselves of old beliefs that has stunted our growth and prevented us from experiencing God's grace, for only then, when we let go of the old, that we would be able to accept the new and grow with the new.

Let us pray to God that he would give us the humility to accept the things that we need to let go and change in our lives so that He can work his wonders in us. Amen.