Faith

New Wine, Old Whines – Saturday, 13th week in ordinary time – 4th July 2026 – Matthew 9:14-17

Today, we are in the second teaching on discipleship. Jesus has called Matthew and now he and his friends are feasting with Jesus much to the disapproval of the Pharisees. But these attacks must not be seen in isolation. Chapter nine sees three sets of people attacking Jesus. It begins with the scribes in verse three, then the Pharisees in verse eleven and now in our text of today we have the disciples of John the Baptist himself.

The last group comes across as a shocker! Why would the disciples of Jesus’ cousin themselves criticize Jesus? Let us hypothetically, but rather safely put it down to sour grapes and a dwindling congregation. While we have sufficient evidence to show that the Baptists (followers of John) were certainly popular during Jesus’ lifetime, the fact that Jesus was drawing crowds could only mean that he was drawing crowds from their following.

They now join the Pharisees in taking on Jesus. Note the line of questioning, ‘why do your disciples not fast but we, the Pharisees and the disciples of John, fast?’ There are two things to observe here. First, they are not directly accusing Jesus but pointing fingers at his disciples. In short, they are subtly stating that the disciples are ‘bad’ because the master is bad. Guilt by association is the oldest trick in the critic’s playbook. Targeting the flock is a cowardly way to attack the Shepherd.

Secondly, this is a case of ‘spiritual one up-manship’. In making this statement, they are effectively telling Jesus, ‘We are spiritually better than you.’ The disciples of John clung so tightly to the voice in the wilderness that they missed the Word in the room. 

What really is the purpose of fasting? Jesus never explicitly gave specific instructions on fasting or on the days one ought to fast. He did though give a teaching on how we ought NOT to fast. In Matthew 5:16 he did tell us that fasting is not a matter of IF you fast but a matter of ‘whenever’ you fast. The ‘whenever’ may knock off the feeling of an obligation but that is not the case.

Jesus is taking to a Jewish audience and for them fasting was part of their religious DNA. He does however, correct the intention of their fasts; gloomy looks on days of fasting does not please God, especially if the fasting is done to win men’s favour. When it came to fasting, Jesus did not command the calendar, rather he addressed the heart. True spiritual disciplines are driven by hunger for God, not a duty to a date.

Yet the impression that one would get from today’s text would seem to indicated that fasting was a necessary and integral requirement of the Jewish law. While today, pious Jews are mandated to fast six times a year; the only fast that was stipulated in the Old Testament was the Day of Atonement. The fasting, practiced by the Jews at the time of Jesus, was merely a traditional religious practice. The Pharisees however observed additional fasts on the second and fifth day of the week and imposed the same on everyone else.

But the apparent public rap on the knuckles for Jesus was clearly an attempt to name and shame Our Lord in order to get him to fall in line with main stream religious leadership. The goal of religious peer pressure is never transformation; it is always subjugation. It is for this reason that Jesus is forced to take them on in response to their hostility.  

Jesus responds with not one but two examples to answer their claims. These are found in verses, fifteen to seventeen. Here is the point that Jesus was making. Jesus has come to bring the Good News of the Kingdom of God. This ‘GOOD NEWS’ was also ‘NEW NEWS’ and all things new are resisted at first.

The religious establishment wanted a rehearsal of the past, but Jesus brought a revolution for the future. Jesus understands their reluctance to accept his new message but insists that this new message needs a new and open mind just as new wine needs new wineskins. People will fiercely defend a dying system just to avoid a dynamic shift.

Is Jesus thus dismissing the Old Law and traditions? Absolutely not! Time and time again, and we read this in Chapter 5: 1, he has said he has not come to abolish the law and the prophets but to fulfil it. One of his examples in verse 16 helps us to understand his message better. Jesus says, “no one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak, for the patch pulls away from the cloak and a worse tear is made.

The Greek word for patch is pleroma also translated as fullness and the Greek word for tear is schima from where you get the word schism. What Jesus is saying is that his message (the patch) is the fullness. The old coat is good but to take that and stitch a patch (new message of Jesus) would cause a tear when the patch ‘pulls away’, causing a tear (schism) between the Jews and the Jewish Christians.

In verse seventeen he reverses the order. No one puts new wine (his teachings) into old wineskins (the Jewish Law and Prophets). His new message cannot be force fit into the traditional ways of thinking. But lest you being to think that Jesus is dismissing one for the other look carefully, he is not. He is holding and preserving both while calling for a new way of thinking a new and personal approach to God.

The point of the illustrations, is to bring about a change in the approach to faith and religion in the minds of the religious establishment. This was not some novelty that Jesus was introducing for the sake of attracting people to his ministry. Our Lord was not hunting for headlines; He was correcting the heart.  This was good practical advice to his peers who were misguided by their own religious thinking and expressions of piety. His examples were common sense insights taken from daily life.

One should not assume that Jesus is merely some itinerant preacher running around trying to subvert traditional practices by introducing something completely new. He is here to align the real practice of the faith with what God wants for His people. Faith is not about maintaining a system; it is about maturing a people. These human religious traditions often have little to do with God and much to do with pandering to human need. Man-made traditions often serve human egos while starving the divine purpose.

Jesus’ teachings are new and bold and aligned with the will of God. They are not some patchworks of thought to be attached to the traditional practices of the Jewish establishment. They demand a newness of both wine and wineskins. As the teachings are ‘new,’ the receivers of this good news must also put on a ‘new mind’. The old boundaries cannot contain the new reality of God’s reign coming near in Jesus.

Reflecting on this, we need to find a balance in the way the Church grows. There is much in the rich tradition of the Catholic liturgy that is beautiful and very meaningful. Change for the sake of novelty is a danger. Yet to simply cling on to celebrating a mass at right angles can be the reason that hinders people from connecting to this community celebration. The beauty of the liturgy is meant to mirror heaven, not isolate earth. Virtue lies in the middle.

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Solemnity of St Thomas – Apostle of India – 3rd July, 2026 – John 20:24-29

The text of today takes us to the first Easter Sunday. The Lord had risen and no sooner that he stepped out of the tomb, Jesus chose to appear to the apostles. John 20 tells us the narrative of that first encounter. It was on the evening of that first Easter Sunday that Jesus appeared to the apostles. He showed them his hands and side. The apostles were not only terrified of the Jews but now mortified that this could be a ghost that their eyes beheld.  

At the height of their fear, Jesus gives them the gift of peace and then breaths the Holy Spirit on them. He gave them the power to forgive or retains sins. He had given this power earlier only to Peter, now he gives it to them all. Then, scripture tells us, that Thomas was not there!

I don’t want to make St Thomas our favourite whipping boy for what happened next. Too long, we have thrown St Thomas in the dock with a label that says, ‘doubting Thomas!’  If Peter had his confession, “you are the Christ the son of the living God”, then Thomas had his too, when he said, “My Lord and my God.” If Peter is the Rock, Thomas is the Mirror; reflecting the honest questions we are all too afraid to ask. Peter denied Jesus with his words, but Thomas sought Jesus with his questions. Both were met with grace. Unfortunately, we never hear the confession of Thomas spoken with the same adulation as Peter.

Thomas has been maligned unfairly for centuries from the pulpit for what seems to be a moment’s weakness of unbelief.  He has forever been tarnished with the name ‘doubting Thomas’ when in reality he is like you and me, a ‘seeking Thomas’; seeking answers all his life with a thousand questions. He is the patron saint of the inquisitive; forever our ‘Seeking Thomas.’

St Thomas has patiently borne centuries of name calling for ONE single lapse of faith. That is a punishment too harsh to bear. If we are to be fair to Thomas, let’s look at the rap sheet of some of the other apostles. Peter denied the Lord, three times but we don’t call him denier. Nathaniel scoffed when he said, “What good can come from Nazareth’’ but we don’t call him a scoffer. James and John were fighting for the right to sit at the Lord’s left and right seats but we don’t call them opportunist.  The rest abandoned the Lord at Gethsemane but we don’t call them cowards.  Poor Thomas, he got the worst end of the Christian preacher’s stick, and a name, ‘doubting Thomas’ which has stuck to him like feathers to tar.

There was another ‘mistake’ he made that day, one that seems to be overlooked. It is true he would not believe; it is true that he wanted proof. What is also true is that while the others accepted the resurrection on Easter Sunday, Thomas chose to wait another full week to celebrate Easter. It was a week later that the Lord appeared to Thomas, it was a week later that Thomas relaised his foolishness; it was a delayed Easter for Thomas because he chose not to believe. The true cost of his doubt was not just a label, but a week of unnecessary isolation and grief while others were already rejoicing. While the upper room echoed with resurrection joy, Thomas spent seven days trapped in Good Friday. Here is a lesson for us; doubting does not change the resurrection; it only delays our invitation to the party.

We all have our moments if not several episodes of ‘unbelief’ or ‘apistos’, in Greek. The English word ‘to doubt,’ is a poor translation of the word ‘apistos’.  The Bible uses the word unbelief and not doubt. To doubt, in the Greek language is translated as ‘distazo’. In John’s Gospel, believing or apistos is more a statement of ‘abiding in Jesus’, a relationship shared with Him, not merely a belief in a doctrine. Distazo means you can’t decide; Apistos means you feel disconnected. Thomas wasn’t indecisive, he was heartbroken.

This is why Jesus, in John’s Gospel asks us to ‘abide in Him.’ The English translations, loosely translated, should really read, ‘do not be ‘unbelieving’ but believe in the relationship we have which did not die on the cross’. Thomas wasn’t wavering in his thoughts; his personal connection to Jesus had been fractured by the trauma of the cross, and he needed that relationship restored.

This relationship between Jesus and Thomas was repaired the moment Thomas opened his heart to renewing his faith when he said, “My Lord and My God”. These are loaded words. He uses the word MY, indicating a relationship, an expression of abiding. He did not say you are ‘the Lord and the God’.

For Thomas, Jesus is not only his Lord but also his God and the two are cemented by that three-letter word AND.  Thomas is not merely renewing a confession of faith; he is making a confession of relationship.

We all live through our ‘thomistic’ moments of unbelief in our relationship with the Lord. How can Jesus die on me when I need Him the most? Where was He when I was clinging to the last straw of hope? Why did He not send someone to help me carry my cross? The How’s, Where’s and Why’s plague our mind like it did with Thomas. Yet He becomes the model of ‘faith restored’ when He renews his relationship with the one who never abandoned him. We don’t doubt God’s existence; we doubt His location when we are hurting. The reality is that in moments likes these, it is not that we doubt God’s existence; we doubt His location when we are hurting.

The words of Thomas, “My Lord and My God’ are meant to be whispered as words that give us strength in our moments of ‘unbelief’. It is in these words that we can find comfort, knowing that the Apostle of India shared in the same experience of unbelief that we go through. Thomas teaches us that a relationship can survive the questions if we stay in the room.

Thomas can no longer be in the dock. He has been acquitted by the Lord himself, he is not guilty and no pulpit can try him again. His title of “doubting” was but for a single week, but the “Apostle” crown was his for a lifetime of service. It is time we retire the name ‘Doubting Thomas’ and recognize him for what he truly was; a ‘Seeking Thomas’.

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  Thursday, 13th Week in ordinary time – Matthew 9:1-8

The Gospel of Matthew was written in the late first century, a turbulent period following the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, to help a predominantly Jewish-Christian audience redefine their identity.

Chapter nine of the Gospel of Matthew has the last of the four miracle narratives. The first six were in chapter eight. Chapter nine also has Jesus calling Matthew to be an apostle and this is followed by a teaching on discipleship. It then winds down, giving way to the second of Matthew’s discourse in chapter ten; the mission discourse.

But chapter nine will also see the first sparks of confrontation that Jesus encounters. The opposition does not come from just one group. Jesus faces critics from three distinct sides; from the legalistic scribes (9:3), the ritual focused Pharisees (9:11) and even with the ascetic disciples of his own cousin, John the Baptist (9:14).

The Greek word ‘grammateus,’ translated scribe, means writer. The scribes were the ones who drew up legal documents. They also copied the Old Testament Scripture and devoted themselves to the study of the law, and the determination of its applications on daily life. They also studied the Scripture with respect to doctrinal and historical matters. Noted scribes had their own disciples and many of the scribes were members of the Jewish council.

We are no strangers to the healing power of Jesus. On this occasion, it is the power of petition that prompts Jesus to heal a paralysed man. Perhaps this miracle would have been without incident if Jesus simply took the man’s hand like he did with Peter’s mother-in-law.

St Matthew wants to make a point. Jesus is not just some wonder working miracle man; he is the Son of God whom even satan, who had possessed two men in Gadara, acknowledged as being so. For St Matthew, while Jesus has the ability to heal, he has even more, the authority to take away sins that were seen as the cause of illness. The religious leaders counted sins; Jesus erased them.

Hence Jesus does not at first say, ‘pick up your mat and walk’ but He says, ‘your sins are forgiven’. Jesus mended the man’s soul before He fixed his steps. He is the Son of God and with Him rests the power to forgive sins, but He also has the power to extend this authority – to forgive sins, to the Church.  It is for these reasons that that those who see this miracle are not merely left amazed, as in Mark’s Gospel, but they glorify God who had given such authority to men.

The paralyzed man is brought to Jesus for physical mobility, but Jesus addresses his spiritual state first by saying, “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven” (Matt 9:2). His proclamation, “take heart son, your sins are forgiven” causes the scribes to be agitated. The scriptures do not tell us that they objected vociferously. Rather we are told that they had “evil thoughts in their hearts;” for they called him a blasphemer. A critical spirit will make you miss the miracle standing right in front of you.

This was the very charge that they brought against him at his trial (Matthew 26:65). The scribes correctly understood that Jesus claimed to do something that only God can do. But they were incorrect in assuming that Jesus was not God Himself.

Our Lord did not seek disputes. Yet when evil sets in our hearts we become the agents of satan and evil and then we are capable of attacking even our Lord. The evil in our mind pollutes our hearts, pushing us to train our guns against good men and women and turning the forces of evil against them. It is the little things, that we need to guard our heart from.

Finally, the Lord today was prompted to work a miracle looking at the faith of the friends of the paralytic. The paralytic perhaps had no faith at all; at least the Gospel does not seem to mention it explicitly. He was obedient, he took his mat and went home when he was told but as far as faith, we are told nothing. But it is the faith of the friends with which I want to end this reflection. True friends don’t just carry your burdens; they carry you to Jesus.

If there is anything that hits home in this text, it is the power of intercessory prayer. I have bemoaned the way the ‘prayers of the faithful’ are written and even more, prayed at Sunday mass. On one or two occasions in my parish, I have urged members in the congregation to come forward and make a spontaneous prayer. The silence that follows would make any school teacher ecstatic; but it is heart breaking for the minister.

 It is a moment when he realises how poor our faith is and how limited are our expressions. The church should be a house of prayer, not a monument of silence. We have mastered reading prayers, but we have forgotten how to cry out. We don’t need eloquent speakers in the pews; we need desperate advocates for the broken.

We have failed to encourage spontaneous intercessory prayer. Such prayer when made in faith, moves mountains. It does not have to be wordy but simple words that come from the heart. ‘Heal a sister who has cancer Lord’, Help my neighbour get a job lord,’ ‘take care of our doctors and nurses who care for the sick.’ The list can be endless. God answers the weight of our burden, not the wordiness of our vocabulary.

The friends of the paralytic had their petition heard because they believed. Today, you can move mountains as you pray for those who are in need of your prayers for them. Sometimes, the greatest miracle in a person’s life is the community that won’t let them give up.

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Wednesday, 13th week in ordinary time – 1st of July 2026 – Matthew 8:28-34

Chapters 8 and 9 of the Gospel of Matthew have ten miracle narratives punctuated by three teachings on discipleship. The Gospel of today focuses on the fifth miracle in this ten part series.

Jesus has had to deal with the incredulity of his apostles. He reprimands them, albeit gently for he found their faith lacking. The three miracles that he had worked in Capernaum had not convinced them that with Jesus in the boat they could smile in the storm. Now that the Sea of Galilee is calm once again, the apostles and the Lord arrive at the ‘other side,’ in the country of the Gadarenes. The calm of the Sea of Galilee was not the end of the journey; it was simply the runway for the next display of absolute authority.

The country of the Gadarenes was more a region rather than some sovereign nation and it got its name from the town of Gadara on the south-east side of the lake. This was most certainly a Gentile region for we are told that its people reared pigs, an animal no Jew would ever touch, lest they be defiled.

Our Lord is encountered by two demoniacs coming out of the tombs, they are fierce and no one could pass that way. Right away, the demoniacs have no problem recognising who Jesus is; they call him the ‘Son of God’. How ironic it is that the twelve apostles, just a couple of verses earlier, ask “what sort of man is this?” in response to Our Lord calming the storm. The disciples who loved Him asked who He was, while the demons who hated Him called Him by His name. If hell can confess His deity without hesitation, what excuse does humanity have for its hesitation

At the time of Our Lord, there was a belief that demons were free to roam the earth until the Judgment Day came. They did this by taking possession of people. This possession was often associated with disease, because disease was the consequence of sin and a sign of being in Satan’s power.

Now they stand in the presence of the Lord, they know that this is a battle they won’t win. There’s no negotiation here as if they were equal partners at the negotiating table; Jesus is superior, and they know it and so they chose a way out; “send us into the heard of swine.” Hell’s pride plummeted from controlling a highway to drowning with livestock.

The number of pigs isn’t mentioned in Matthew like it is in Mark 5:13 (“about two thousand”), but the herd is called large. It is when the demons go out from the two demonized men into the herd and they all perish, we get the very clear sense of how big, how large, how serious these men’s bondage was.

But what happens next is even more surprising. The demons may have chosen their next place of residence but the swine would not have satan live with them for even a moment. Even swine knew that satan never rents space without intending total demolition. They preferred death than having to live with satan. The swine chose immediate death over demonic possession, proving that creation would rather perish than be perverted. They rush down a steep bank into the sea and perish in the water.

The demons had clarity who the Lord was and seeing him they had a premonition that he was here to destroy them. It is they who say to him, “have you come here to torment us before the time.” What they did not expect is that the Lord was not here to give them a new comfortable dwelling or a change in residence. The Lord comes to conquer and destroy satan not to make him comfortable. Darkness does not negotiate with the Light; it begs for an exit strategy. The forces of hell didn’t need a theological debate; they just needed a single word: ‘Go.’

The narrative now takes an unexpected twist. For one, it does not tell us what happened to the two men in whom the demons had once taken residence. It takes for granted their new life of freedom from satan. However, we are told that the townspeople on being told what had happened begged Jesus to leave their neighbourhood. Were they scared? I think not.

The townsfolk should have asked Jesus to stay and stay forever, in order to be protected from any further attack. Why would you ask a mighty Messiah who has the power to deliver you from the clutches of satan to leave? The answer is obvious; we love our possessions more than the Lord. They would rather have their pork vindaloo on Christmas day but not the Christ who was born to save us.

Jesus drowned an entire industry to rescue two individuals, permanently settling the debate on the net worth of a human soul. The townspeople saw the healed men but missed the Messiah. This serves as a warning: it is entirely possible to know exactly who Jesus is intellectually, yet completely reject His lordship in daily life.

God often disrupts our human expectations of how a blessing should look. The townspeople wanted a predictable, safe environment, but Jesus brought a disruptive, messy deliverance that changed the entire economic and spiritual landscape of the region. We often pray for God to change our situation, then get angry when He disrupts our comfort to do it

Finally, to address the modern skeptics of the Bible, some who claim to be Christian and to whom demon-possession is rubbish. Such people claim that demon possession was just a primitive way that people described psychic or social disorders.

The scriptures have never accommodated popular superstitions; if they were false or fanciful, the scriptures would have corrected any false teaching. Rather, the scriptures clearly affirm that there is a spirit world all around us that cannot be ignored.

 The Fourth Lateran council which began in Rome in 1215, clearly acknowledges the role of Satan and his fallen angels who are called demons. It’s a pity that some Christians dismiss with ‘great authority’ the role of Satan or demons as merely a creation of a superstitious mind. The war against satan is real

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13th Sunday in ordinary time – Matthew 10:37-42

We come to the end of the second of five discourses found in the Gospel of Matthew. The mission discourse ends with no apology. It is not a diplomatic speech that has carefully tip toed safely past a minefield of difficult issues.  The mission discourse is not a lecture; it is an ultimatum. Jesus presents the Kingdom not as a philosophy to be debated, but as a reality to be embraced immediately.

If Jesus were a salesman in the modern world, He would have surely lost His job. The art of waxing eloquent was certainly not his forte. A good salesman highlights the features and hides the costs. Jesus does the exact opposite; He puts the price tag on the front window. Modern consumer culture promises that buying a product will make life easier, smoother, and more comfortable. Jesus’ “product” is a cross. He wasn’t looking for buyers to satisfy; He was looking for disciples to transform.

Jesus never gave his disciples, even remotely, a false expectation. He did not make the mission discourse sound exciting or like some exiting adventure just to lure more people to his cause. Rather, he promised a hard trek down some dusty and challenging roads. The sales pitch that he made, would have effectively driven away any prospective disciple.

The mission discourse makes it abundantly clear that the Christian will always be to the world, a point of derision, an object of scorn. This is not merely from those who sit outside our ‘green pastures’ but also include many from within the community who mock the sheep.

Making a choice for Christ clearly sets you on a collision course with the rest of the world and the world does not have to be on the other side of the globe; they are often on the other side of the room in your very home. Those in the early Church who followed Christ, leaving their pagan faiths, were the ones who did not just feel some heat under the collar; many felt the heat literally as they were burnt for Nero’s pleasure.

Just when it sounds like it can’t get any worse, Jesus drops another bombshell. He says He has not come to bring peace to the earth but the sword. Rather strange words from the very one who came to be the ‘Prince of peace’ and who called peacemakers, blessed.

Lest we misunderstand the Lord, His intention is not to bring about bloodshed. The regrettable side effect of the Gospel is division, resulting from the uncompromising proclamation of the kingdom. The mission discourse clearly outlines the great challenges that the disciple must face in taking the Good News to the world along with the side effects it brings.  For Jesus, this is moment when decisions have to be made. We are with Him in mission or we are not! Jesus leaves no room for casual fans; He only accepts committed followers.

Jesus is emphatic; luke-warm Christians who have been bathing in their watered down understanding of the Catholic faith are “not worthy of him.” While we may propagate and promote our happy-clappy, kumbaya version of Christ, that version, good as it may be, must also be confronted with verse 38 where we are told that if Christ is not first in everything, then we stand nowhere in his court; we are not worthy of him. If God is not at the centre of your heart, your boundaries will always be misplaced.

The mission discourse calls us to be a walking embassy. When you step out into the world as a disciple, you operate as an ambassador of Christ. Your presence should change the spiritual climate of the rooms you walk into. When you walk with Christ, you carry His presence into every room.

Christ does not ask us to actively seek persecutors so that we may be martyred but he actively asks us to die to ourselves in order that we may find him. He says “those who find THEIR life will lose it.” What Christ is saying is that those who make a life for themselves in which HE is not part of, that life is a life created for themselves. It is a life devoid of him. That life, as happy as it may seem to the world, is a life lost.

 That brings us to the million-dollar question as the mission discourse draws to a close; what’s in it for me? There is no talk of a diadem and a palace for those that serve Him. There is however a promise of a disciple’s reward proportionate to the act of love that we show to others; to a prophet, a righteous person or a ‘little one’. That’s it!

That brings us to the million-dollar question as the mission discourse draws to a close; what’s in it for me? There is no talk of a diadem and a palace for those that serve Him. There is however a promise of a disciple’s reward proportionate to the act of love that we show to others; to a prophet, a righteous person or a ‘little one’. That’s it! 

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