May God give to you of the dew of the heavens
And of the fertility of the earth abundance of grain and wine. -Genesis 27:28
The most difficult for me to do is to discern the will of God for my life. I know rationally that he desires my obedience and has set before me Sacred Scripture and the teachings of Holy Mother Church to guide me in my life. The Church gives me things to help me in the present moment on how to live virtuously and to come to have a great understanding of who Jesus is.
What the Scriptures and teachings cannot do is form my friendship and relationship with Christ for me. A relationship with Christ is intimate and personal. By definition, the relationship with Christ is a two way interaction. Scripture can bring one half of the equation. The relationship must come from an inward desire of the soul with the help of the Holy Spirit. Prayer is the communication of the heart, the instant communication with God. With this relationship, today’s scriptures for the Mass offer some great insight into our own relationship.
The first reading is from the book of Genesis where Isaac is seeking to bestow upon his firstborn son his blessing. His firstborn, Esau, is sent to hunt for game and while he is away, his mother disguises Jacob so that he can receive the blessing instead. The deception demonstrated in this reading is a great lesson to me and to us all about how we are to go about our relationship with Christ (or rather how we are not to go about this relationship). Holiness in our lives, sustained and renewed by our relationship with Christ, demands that we live virtuously. There is a sincere lack of virtue in the actions of Rebekah and the complicit behavior of Jacob.
The Church gives us an opportunity in this story to remember that we have sacramental grace to help us know that we are redeemed. The sacrament of Confession allows me and you to experience forgiveness of the Lord and redemption to rejoin the communion of the Church. By the grace of God, confessing my sins to the priest and to the Church helps me to try to feel the weight of the sin which Jesus took to the cross for my salvation. While this causes me to stir a little and feel guilt, I say this prayer as my Act of Contrition:
Father, I have sinned against heaven and earth and am no longer worthy to be called your son; may God have mercy on me, a sinner.
I prefer this as my act of contrition because I feel a sort of kinship with the prodigal son. I feel as though Jesus is speaking directly to me because in that my sinfulness is the result of my direct choices. But then I hear these words:
God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of His Son has reconciled the world to Himself and has sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins. Through the ministry of the Church may God grant you pardon and peace and I absolve you of your sins + in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
This brings us to the Gospel because Jesus is asked directly about the practice of fasting. Fasting is one of the treasures of the Church for the penitent and contrite of heart. Our Lord is asked why don’t his disciples fast and the Pharisees and the followers of John fast. The Lord responds with three images of renewal without directly addressing the lack of fasting. The bridegroom image calls to mind a wedding. The patching of a old, torn cloak is the second image of renewal. The third is the image of the wineskins. New wine for new wineskins because putting new wine into wineskins risks the wine because the skins can burst.
Jesus is the bridegroom. We cannot mourn his saving act while he was with the disciples. Fasting is a great spiritual practice, but foregoing food is not in itself enough to satisfy the Lord for our failures. Jesus is priming the disciples for the truth that salvation is by the grace of God alone and not by our works. This leads to the old cloak. We only have our lives and through our daily journey, we can become worn through the trials and struggles of life. Confession and spiritual exercises, which do not justify us alone, but rather heal our souls and bring us back to how Jesus wants us to be. And finally, the wineskins make sense. We are made new by the sacraments and that grace is poured into our lives to help us to combat the temptations and sin we will encounter.
Our hearts are made for this grace. God’s love is poured into our lives and we are meant to overflow with this love and give this love to the world. If we forget and miss the mark, we run the risk of becoming old wineskins. That is, stretched and torn and degraded. But Jesus does not leave nor does his grace. He never stops loving us and when we remember this and call to mind our transgressions, you and I are called back into his love. Confession will make you and I new. It can build and renew our friendship and relationship with Jesus. And that is what Jesus wants most desperately from us. He wants to be our friend.
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