New wine must be poured into fresh wineskins. And no one who has been drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’” This saying of Jesus is something of a mixed metaphor. On the one hand “new wine in new wineskins” has been used as the image to describe the renewed way of being Church since the Vatican Council II. On the other hand, as Jesus puts it, “the old is good,” there is something valuable in the old wine. That describes the dilemma of the contemporary Church. We are being called by Pope Francis to live out the gospel in new and refreshing ways. On the other hand, the wisdom of the ages continues to underlie our spiritual lives.
