Wineskins

JMJ
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The Readings for the 13th Saturday, Tempus per Annum

• Amos 9:11-15
• Matthew 9:14-17

The plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the vintager, him who sows the seed.

Amos 9:13 (NABRE)

SHABBAT SHALOM! Nerdy side note: in all romance languages, the days are numbered: Day 2, Day 3. Day seven is usually always some form of “Sabbath” (which is from the Hebrew for seven). Sunday is always “Lord’s Day.” So, Shabbat Shalom! ANYWAY…

It’s interesting that Church puts Amos 9 and Matthew 9 side by side, don’t you think? Israel is coming back and is going to rebuild their ruins and Jesus says don’t put new wine in old wineskins. What are ruins but old wineskins?

San Francisco is a city rebuilt from the ruins of an earthquake and a great fire. When calamity struck in the early morning of 18 April 1906 most of the city fell down. Half of it burned. And it was rebuilt. In many places the older bricks were used. If you look closely at the above photo of our Armory, you can see bricks sticking out at irregular intervals.

These are bricks that have been warped by the 1906 fire. You can see these all over the parts of the city that were rebuilt: all the bricks from the tumbled buildings were collected – including the warped ones – and reused in the post-1906 world. They make an interesting artistic statement about our resiliency and pluck. Evidently, in some ways, their irregular shapes make the masonry stronger because there are no uniform seams that run the full length or height of any wall. So they also say something like, “Try to knock me down again. Just try.”

So it is possible to rebuild on some ruins to the improvement of the ruins and the new construction.

On the other hand, much of San Francisco needed to be fully razed to the ground, the foundations remade, and whole neighborhoods flattened before any renewal could begin.

Sometimes you cannot rebuild until you tear down. This is where the wineskins come in, he said, proudly mixing metaphors.

“Gratia non tollit naturam, sed perficit,” said Aquinas. Grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it. So there are some things that are part of my nature and some things that are not. We must learn to distinguish. The Church is pretty clear about what is mine versus what is the damage done to mine, the disorder caused by myself and the world.

I started a series of posts on identity a few weeks ago. I have not yet finished it:

• Christianity and Identity I
• Christianity and Identity II
• Christianity and Identity III
• Christianity and Identity IV

I’ve been wondering how to wrap up with Identity IV and these readings came up. See there are some things that can be reused like these bricks. There are somethings that don’t belong: that don’t make the structure stronger. In fact, they will tear it down. They’re not part of the original plan, but rather are brought in by the chiefest and greatest of calamities: sin.

Thus, someone coming to the Church has to explore their heart and be ready to accept things like teachings on sexuality and the person, like teachings on divorce and remarriage, like teachings on abortion. I mention these because their are target issues today, certainly, but they have been hot-button issues for the last 2000 years. The Church’s teachings on sexual purity were one of the things that set her apart from the pagan world around her and made people feel safe, unexploited, and able to reach out to God.

We must learn what the Dominicans teach (sometimes erroneously credited to Aquinas), “Seldom affirm, never deny, always distinguish.” So it comes to me that the ruins of my past need to be razed. I need to show the deconstruction process in part IV which is now nearly ready to go.

Yes, there may be a few bricks that can be reused, but some may be like the old wineskins: ready to explode if we put in the new wine of Christ’s blood. It’s time to distinguish.

Shabbat Shalom!