Fermenting

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/090525.cfm

A number of years ago, I was leading a series called Jesus Christ, King of the Jews, where we examined all of the great elements of Jesus' Jewishness, and on the last evening, we invited people to bring food and beverage and make the night a little 'celebratory'. One woman brought a bottle of Spanish wine that was over 50 years old. I think that it was the best wine I have ever tasted. One thing that is true of all old wines: they were once new wines.

Every old wine in old wine skins was once new wine. New wine is NOT DRINKABLE. It is grapes and sugar and yeast. In order to become palatable and desirable, it must take time to ferment. In this process there are real changes that occur. Sugar becomes alcohol, gasses are created which stretch the wine skin, flavors mellow. My point here is not to educate you on wine making (I'm more of a consumer than a vintner), but to consider what Jesus might have been getting at with this parable.

Jesus knew that what He was bringing would stretch or even break the structures of Pharisees. What Jesus was bringing was something that was growing, expanding, changing the fundamental nature of things. The forgiveness and salvation that He was bringing was not accounted for in the Jewish faith, because it had been awaited, but not yet existing. In the changing of grapes into wine, there is a sacrificing of the identity of the grape - the thing that is entirely earthly. In the same way, in baptism, our old self dies and a new life is born. Born of spirit.

Interestingly, we are still experiencing the old and new wine skins. Each person is new wine in a new wine skin. They are infused with the Holy Spirit and they change and grow and expand. This is the fermenting part and as a whole, we are a fermenting people. We continue to grow and expand. God, the master vintner is always bringing about a new vintage, but He is also encouraging us to pour into others the mature wine from our mature wine skins. It is this wine that is palatable and spirited. We must always have this combination, the wine of compassion and the new crop of grapes filling the new wine skins.

This requires patience on both parts. Those who are new wine must be patient as they learn and grow and ferment. This is the wisdom of Confirmation. In our time as new Christians, we grow in our love of the Lord, and come to know Him more fully, and then, when Confirmed, we can begin to pour out ourselves to others so that they might themselves might desire to change fundamentally, to be fermented. On the other hand, those in old wine skins, must be patient and remember that each person must go through this period of fermentation and that it doesn't happen immediately, and might happen a little differently for them. But it must happen, and while it does, we might find them a little 'unpalatable'. Our wine of compassion will help them to ferment in their own wine skins. They will never be poured into ours.

St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us that 'every analogy limps' and so with this one. Here is where this one does: we are never done fermenting. Jesus' new wine is always new and at the same time always palatable.