New wine into fresh wineskins

It is an interesting coincidence that this is the Gospel (Matthew 9:14-17) on the very day that the Holy Father releases his Motu Proprio about the older form of the Mass.

People do not put new wine into old wineskins.
Otherwise the skins burst, the wine spills out,
and the skins are ruined.
Rather, they pour new wine into fresh wineskins,
and both are preserved.

The basic point of the metaphor is that the “new creation” wrought by God through Christ cannot be contained by the “old” externals of the past. This is not to denigrate the good of the past but to emphasize the radical newness of what God accomplishes in Christ: a newness without parallel in human history (and even to try to equate that radical newness with any other point in human or ecclesial history would be rather silly).

Indeed, even the older form of the Mass is part of the newness of Christ.

The old wineskins we should be concerned about are more personal. If we have been filled with the grace of Christ and made a new creature in him, it is very problematic for us to retain our old sinful habits and the lifestyle of unevangelized humanity.

May we put away the old wineskins of sin, so that we may be more perfectly filled with the new life of Christ.