What was Jesus getting at when he said you cannot pour new wine into old wineskins? ( Mark 2:22 ).

Back in the early seventies when I was in France, I used to take long walks with friends through the Lorraine Valley on week-ends. On one of our memorable walks, we sat down and opened a wineskin. Nothing! “It’s an old wineskin,” said one of my friends aghast, “all the new wine is gone.” That’s when I understood what Jesus was talking about when He compared his followers to new wineskins.

The fermentation process of the grape creates gasses, and the gasses stretch the wineskins. A new wineskin can expand because it is new, whereas an old wineskin that has already been stretched to the limit will crack and rupture, emptying the new wine on the ground.

Jesus uses the analogy of the wine and the wineskin to convey His teaching about the new life of the Gospel. The new wine represents the good news of the Gospel, and the old wineskin represents the unreformed self. The old, unreformed self needs to be changed or discarded so that a new reformed self (new wineskin) can receive the good news of the Gospel.

“Reform your lives, and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:4) is the clarion call of the gospel. This simple message says it all. To reform our lives means changing the old self. It means letting go of the old ways of behaving as described by St. Paul in Ephesians: “No more lying, then…do not let anger lead you into sin…the man who used to rob must stop robbing …do not use harmful words, but only helpful words…Do not make God’s Holy Spirit sad… Get rid of all bitterness, passion, and anger…. no more shouting or insults, no more hateful feelings of any sort” (Ephesians 4:20-31). These old ways of behaving are the old wineskins which are incapable of accepting the good news of the Gospel which is “kind and tender-hearted to one another, and (which) forgives one another, as God has forgiven (us) through Christ” (Ephesians 4:32).

The Lord wants us to reform our old lives so that we can become like new wineskins, capable of accepting and acting upon the good news.

We have to realize that our human nature is a fallen nature. It is not perfect, but it can be disposed to accept the good news of the gospel. To do this we have to change, we have to become like new wineskins that will not reject the new wine of the gospel.

The new force in our lives creating this change from old to new wineskins is the Holy Spirit. God has given us his Holy Spirit to purify our minds and hearts of selfish desires so we can accept and follow the good news of the gospel.

Come, Holy Spirit!

—Fr. Hugh Duffy