Sunday, November 4, 2007

Lk 5, 36-39 New wine poured into fresh wineskins

(Lk 5, 36-39) New wine poured into fresh wineskins
[36] And he also told them a parable. "No one tears a piece from a new cloak to patch an old one. Otherwise, he will tear the new and the piece from it will not match the old cloak. [37] Likewise, no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins, and it will be spilled, and the skins will be ruined. [38] Rather, new wine must be poured into fresh wineskins. [39] (And) no one who has been drinking old wine desires new, for he says, 'The old is good.'"
(CCC 1999) The grace of Christ is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it. It is the sanctifying or deifying grace received in Baptism. It is in us the source of the work of sanctification (Cf. Jn 4:14; 7:38-39): Therefore if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself (2 Cor 5:17-18). (CCC 670) Since the Ascension God's plan has entered into its fulfilment. We are already at "the last hour" (1 Jn 2:18; cf. 1 Pt 4:7). "Already the final age of the world is with us, and the renewal of the world is irrevocably under way; it is even now anticipated in a certain real way, for the Church on earth is endowed already with a sanctity that is real but imperfect" (LG 48 § 3; cf. 1 Cor 10:11). Christ's kingdom already manifests its presence through the miraculous signs that attend its proclamation by the Church (Cf. Mk 16:17-18, 20). (CCC 853) On her pilgrimage, the Church has also experienced the "discrepancy existing between the message she proclaims and the human weakness of those to whom the Gospel has been entrusted" (GS 43 § 6). Only by taking the "way of penance and renewal," the "narrow way of the cross," can the People of God extend Christ's reign (LG 8 § 3; 15; AG 1 § 3; cf. RMiss 12-20). For "just as Christ carried out the work of redemption in poverty and oppression, so the Church is called to follow the same path if she is to communicate the fruits of salvation to men" (LG 8 § 3).

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