Gospel (Lk 5,33-39) - At that time, the Pharisees and their scribes said to Jesus: «John's disciples often fast and pray; so also the disciples of the Pharisees; yours instead eat and drink! Jesus answered them, “Can you make the wedding guests fast when the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them: then they will fast in those days." He also told them a parable: «No one tears a piece from a new garment to put it on an old garment; otherwise the new one will tear it and the piece taken from the new one will not fit the old one. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the wineskins, spill and the wineskins will be lost. New wine must be poured into new wineskins. Then no one who drinks old wine desires the new, because he says: "The old is pleasant!".

The commentary on the Gospel by Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia

«No one tears a piece from a new garment to put it on an old garment – says Jesus –; otherwise the new one tears it away and the piece taken from the new one doesn't fit into the old one." In this way the new is ruined and the old is not repaired. And in a subsequent simile Jesus observes that «no one pours new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the wineskins, it will spill and the wineskins will be lost." Also in this case the damage is double, both for the wine and for the wineskins. The two images illustrate very effectively the novelty of the evangelical message: the love of Jesus cannot be contained in the ritualistic schemes of the Pharisees nor in the external attitude of those who follow ritual practices but remain with their hearts distant from God and others because it is restricted to one's own self. The Gospel of love has a disruptive force that cannot be contained by our egocentrism, by our laziness, by our purely external schemes, by our formulas with which we sometimes even contrast the Spirit. The gift of God always requires a new heart, that is, a heart that converts, a mind that listens and lets itself be guided by his Word. Obstinacy in one's own ideas and traditions makes one blind and cold: it makes one love oneself more than the newness of the Gospel, to the point of saying, precisely, that "the old is pleasant", that is, one always prefers one's own self and own habits to the newness of the Gospel. The apostle Paul - precisely to defeat the temptation to stop at one's own traditions - will write to the Galatians: what matters is "being a new creature" (6.15). It is from new men that a new world will be born.