THE NEW WINESKIN AND WINE

SATURDAY, THIRTEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Gen 27:1-5,15-29; Ps 135:1-6; Mt 9:14-17

The Earthly and Heavenly Wineskins

The story of Esau and Jacob, the children of Isaac and Rebekah, is apt and illustrative of the distinction between our natural life and the life of grace we receive from God at our baptism. Esau, the elder of the twin boys, had a free and independent mindset. He lived free from his parents as a man of the field and a hunter of game, which was the reason his father loved him. He represents our natural life, by which we tend to live free from God under his permitted will, and desire always to accomplish our own goals and wills. We could say that he represents a wild expression of the free will God gave us, and at the same time, the symbol of the misuse of free will, which gains its true freedom only in choosing God above all else. Jacob, on the other hand, is a homely soul who lived close to his parents, especially his mother, Rebekah. Jacob goes and comes at the bidding of his parents, which made his mother, Rebekah, love him. He represents the life of grace we receive from the saving work of Jesus Christ, by which we can never live apart from God, but in communion with the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit himself being the communion of love. Like Jacob, as Christians, we received the life of Jesus Christ, and we must live in conformity with the Father’s holy will. To live to do one’s will and satisfy one’s desires is to be in enmity with God. As we said yesterday, the spiritual life is a seeking of the heavenly physician to heal our sinful wills and desires.

The dependent life of Jacob received the blessings of Isaac, their father, not as a merited gift, because we can never merit the reality it signifies. Jacob received the blessings of God through their father Isaac, aided by Rebekah, their mother, because he foreshadowed the life of the faithful. As Saint Augustine writes on the predestination of the saints: “This is exactly the predestination of the saints, and it shines out most clearly in the predestination of the Saint of saints. How can anyone deny this who properly understands the utterances of the Truth? For we see that even the Lord of glory is the subject of God’s predestination, in so far as at his incarnation a man became the son of God.” So, Jacob did not merit the blessings he received, just as none of the blessed would merit the blessing of salvation promised to all peoples and nations through Abraham. Just as Jacob lived in close communion with his parents, obeying them in all things, the faithful are to live in communion with God, who is the Trinity, totally conformed to the divine will of God. The crucial role parents play in the transition from our natural life to the life of grace is the reason God added a blessing to the fourth commandment: ‘Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long on earth.’ Jacob stands for honouring our parents by listening to their words as crucial for receiving the blessing of eternal life. Isaac conferred the divine blessings on Jacob, saying: “May God give you dew from heaven, and the richness of the earth, abundance of grain and wine! May nations serve you and peoples bow down before you! Be master of your brothers; may the sons of your mother bow down before you! Curse be he who curses you; blessed be he who blesses you!” With this fullness of blessing, the only option left for anyone is to bless the blessed.

As Isaac gave the blessing as he smelled the rich odour of the labours of Esau, who is strong and worked so hard on his own and touched the hair-covered arms of Jacob. In these qualities of hardworking and fullness of manhood, he is a type of the Son of Man. God smells the odour of sanctity of the Son of Man through the Holy Spirit with which he has clothed us; He sees us rich with the merits of the Son of Man and blesses us with every heavenly blessing in Jesus Christ. It is about what Jesus has done for us by his incarnation, life, death, and resurrection. The Lord made this clear to John’s disciples when they demanded to know why he was not making his disciples fast as in the Gospel. “Jesus replied, ‘Surely the bridegroom’s attendants would never think of mourning as long as the bridegroom is still with them? But the time will come for the bridegroom to be taken away from them, and then they will fast.” The analogy our Lord used here differs from that of yesterday but contains the same message. Just as the sick desires the physician, the bride desires and yearns for her groom. The Lord refrained from calling his disciples brides because they were yet to receive the Holy Spirit that would transform them into his body. He aptly called them attendants to the bridegroom because they had recognised him as the Messiah, unlike those who were following John the Baptist and the Pharisees, who were following the Law. We are attendants and brides of the heavenly bridegroom to the extent we recognise Jesus Christ, desire and yearn for union with him through the Holy Spirit. We must renew our minds in Christ to receive the new wine of the Christian religion.

Let us pray: Grant, Lord God, that we, your servants, may rejoice in unfailing health of mind and body, and, through the glorious intercession of Blessed Mary ever-Virgen, may we be set free from present sorrow and come to enjoy eternal happiness. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.