Saturday of Week 13 in Ordinary Time (Year II)
Amos 9:11-15 | Psalm 84(85):9,11-14 | Matthew 9:14-17
No one puts a piece of unshrunken cloth on to an old cloak, because the patch pulls away from the cloak and the tear gets worse. Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; if they do, the skins burst, the wine runs out, and the skins are lost. No; they put new wine into fresh skins and both are preserved. (Matthew 9:16-17)
As a cradle Catholic, I was not steeped in the superstitions and practices of local cultures, but of course I couldn’t avoid them either. The Chinese zodiac and Western horoscopes were always lurking in the background while growing up, and I slipped off a step and broke my foot 6 months ago while wondering why OCBC Centre was the only building in the Raffles Place area that was almost all curves. (You may have already guessed the answer: feng shui.)
I’m sure most converts face this tug-of-war between the old ways and the new faith, and today’s Gospel uses the metaphor of cloaks and wineskins to remind us that, even back in Jesus’ time, the new covenant He embodied required a break with the Jewish past. No longer were sacrifices mandated; Christ Himself would be the final sacrifice for all mankind, and blind adherence to Mosaic law had to give way to a conscious compulsion to mercy toward others.
So it is too in modern times, and we are fortunate to be living in a fairly tolerant society, where we can exercise our obligation to break from our superstitious past without much trouble. At a Taoist wake, I can now say a quiet prayer to God, asking Him to look kindly upon the deceased, without causing a scene or offending the bereaved. It wasn’t that long ago when doing so would’ve triggered at least a few stares and murmured imprecations.
But we still need to guard against the old superstitions in Catholic form, of treating rosaries and scapulars as talismans and good-luck charms, of drinking holy water daily to prevent illness,1 of hanging crucifixes in every room to ward off evil…and be blithely ignored thereafter. Instead, we should appreciate them for what they are: reminders of our status and responsibilities as God’s children, and tools to grow ever closer to Him.
✞ ✞ ✞ ✞ ✞
St. Paul generally has some words for almost every situation, and in this case, the appropriate passage happens to be one that everyone should already be familiar with:
When I was a child, I used to talk like a child, and think like a child, and argue like a child, but now I am a man, all childish ways are put behind me. (1 Corinthians 13:11)
Amen.