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 granted, then the church in 1985, which claims to be his church, and there's no other with anything like 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, 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 that the the the 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 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, means it goes back to a man named Heraclitus, 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 improve a situation, well, we'll say let's change it, as if that automatically made it better.
Well, new wine is not better than vintage wine. Our 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 pipe dreaming.
We're just 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. 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 revolution, the reformation, so called, of the sixteenth century process.
It's happening right down the line for the last twenty or twenty five years. So, our blessed Lord is telling you, look folks, don't be ashamed to be a conservative. To conserve, to keep, to preserve old wine, even in the new wine skin. In the name of the father, and the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.