Mark 2: 18-22
Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting; and people came and said to him, “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day.
“No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.”
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
Sharpen Our Sense of Justice
In Why We Can’t Wait, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke against the horrific laws applied to Native and African Americans that denigrated their God-given liberties and constitutional rights. In place of laws that assaulted the dignity of others, he offered a Christ-centered Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged to address repeated hardships experienced by discriminatory practices which targeted all ethnic groups countrywide.
In our Gospel today we are again invited to entertain new ways of living with one another without shrinking or pulling away. Just as new wine cannot be held in old, brittle wineskins, God’s rules can’t be held in a mindset of rigid laws filled with bigotry, discrimination and standards that limit equal justice for everyone. Unjust laws represent an inflexible transactional mindset that is antithetical to the relational character of our loving Triune God. May we courageously desire a sharpened sense of justice for all like MLK, Jr. and like new wineskins, expand with love and flexibility to hold each other with respect.
—Lori Stanley is the Executive Director at Loyola Institute for Spirituality in Orange, California. She has a MA in Pastoral Theology with a concentration in Spiritual Direction from Loyola Marymount University. She serves on the boards of the LMU Center for Religion and Spirituality and of Ignatian Ministries.
Prayer
God of love and compassion, increase my desire to communicate your expansive love to others. Transform my stubborn, hardened heart and open it wide to make room for life-giving responses to your invitation to love. Amen.
—Lori Stanley
Pray with the Pope
The Holy Father’s Monthly Prayer Intentions Brought to you by Apostleship of Prayer the first Friday of each month.