A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. The scribes and pharisees said to Jesus, John's disciples, that is John the baptizer, of course, John's disciples fast frequently and offer prayers. The disciples of the pharisees do likewise, but yours, on the contrary, eat and drink freely. Jesus replied, can you make guests of the groom fast while the groom is still with them? But when the days come that the groom is removed from their midst, they will surely fast in those days.
Jesus then proposed to them this figure. No one tears a piece from a new coat to patch an old coat. If he does, he will only tear the new one, and the piece taken out of it will not match the old coat. Moreover, no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does it, the new wine will burst the old skins, and the wine will spill out, and even the skins will be lost.
New wine should be poured into fresh skins. No one, after drinking old wine, wants new wine. He says, I find the old wine better, and this is the gospel of the lord. Praise to you, lord Jesus Christ. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen.
Well, there's a very obvious application of this figure of speech, this metaphor, this allegory of our lord this morning to the present situation in the holy Roman Catholic church. It's only a foolish person who really prefers new wine to to a vintage wine. And that's a very good attitude to take towards the holy Roman Catholic church. It wasn't born yesterday. We are a vintage religion.
We've been around a long time as our calendars and our chronology goes, not if you compare it to the Grand Canyon. And the one the one great essential problem, question, which has to be answered is, does this church of Jesus Christ go back to Jesus Christ? It's that simple. Even if you assume Christ is God or grant it, then the church in 1985, which claims to be his church, and there's no other with anything like this. And I'm including in that the Russian Orthodox.
There is no other which has even a suggestion of an argument. Because remember, for all practical purposes, the disruption of Christianity in a sense of the rejection of basic moral truths comes from the sixteenth century, only three hundred years ago. So the first question is, after if you have, in one way or another, resolved your question about who or what was Jesus Christ, then the question is, where is his church? It's that simple. It's either here or it ate here.
And if we can't find it, then then let's go fishing, because you'll accomplish more. You might catch a fish. And so the whole whole pressure, the whole impulse, the whole drive, the whole urgency of a Christian in 1985, is to be lined up, to be aligned with the hub, Jesus Christ, in the year roughly thirty AD. And so the idea is not to be on on a bandwagon of innovations, of all that is new, and because it's new and different, it's supposed to be better. That is ridiculous.
No sane person can accept that in theory, but multitudes accept it in fact. In fact. We want variety. We want change. We're living in a definitely what we call a Heraclitus world.
But that don't be thrown off by that little world word Heraclitus. No means it goes back to a man named Heraklitus, a Greek philosopher, who said that there is nothing real in the sense in which it is permanent, because everything is in flux, everything is motion. So today, when we can't think of anything better to to improve a situation, well we'll say let's change it, as if that automatically made it better. Well, new wine is not not better than vintage wine. Our own our lord himself says that.
So the whole point of a Christian is to be with Christ. And how do you do it? Because if this cannot be reduced to day in and day out living, then we're then we're we're pipe dreaming. We're just we're we're dealing with fictions. We're worse than a Don Quixote.
And so our blessed Lord tells us today, look folks, don't think you can put new wine into old wineskins. If you do, you're gonna bust the wineskins, and you're going to lose the wineskins and the wine. Notice that, you're losing both of them. Not just the one, you're losing both. And that's what's happening today in the Holy Roman Catholic Church.
We are losing both. We're going in so many instances, what we are doing is simply echoing the re the revolution, the reformation, so called, of the sixteenth century protestants. It's happening right down the line for the last twenty or twenty five years. And so our blessed lord is telling you, look folks, don't be ashamed to be a conservative. To conserve, to keep, to preserve the old wine even in the new wineskin you.
In the name of the father, the son, the holy spirit. Amen.