January 17. The words from the Gospel are always inspiring, often to the point of becoming a disturbance: No one sews a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old cloak. If he does, its fullness pulls away, the new from the old, and the tear gets worse. No one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the skins are ruined. Rather, new wine is poured into fresh wineskins. (Mk 2:21-22). Sometimes it’s like waking up in the morning and realizing that the alarm went off hours ago. It becomes urgent to get up and get going.
The prophets of old were frequently woken up by God when their own moral alarm clocks were not enough. Jerimiah was scolded when he claimed that he was too young (Jeremiah 1:6). In the New Testament, God needed powerful dreams to wake persons up. Joseph wanted to deal with unshrunken cloth and old wineskins, but the new was necessary, otherwise how else would Jesus be born (Matthew 1:20). Jesus probably woke his disciples many a time (Luke 22:45) and is still at it.
I think of the stories of people who have been woken up. The woman who woke up one morning went to visit the man in prison who had murdered her son and forgave him. I enjoy thinking of the “good trouble” creator by the name of Dorothy Day, who disobeyed and put her knee down and took care of the homeless. I think of Oscar Romero, totally complacent with life. After all, he had it made, he had made it, was now the Archbishop of El Salvador. But, God woke him up and he became tireless in speaking the truth against the lies of injustice, and an assassin’s bullet reached him while he celebrated Mass.
Of course, today, Martin Luther King is not far away, today is his day. He too woke up and walked in the footsteps of his Christian faith, no shrunken cloth, no old wineskins. Walking the talk of peace, many others woke up and because of him others woke up as well, and society became born again.
Today I also think of Francisco Valdovinos Ruiz, ST. One year ago, I counted the seconds between each gasp for breath. Since December 16, when he was admitted to the hospital, many of us had been asking that he wake up and get up! And he did, time stood still on this day, January 17 at 1:06 pm. He took his last breath, his hand felt a bit colder under my touch, and I knew he had woken up in the fullness of the Lord.
Let us remember with profound gratitude the many who have led the way. Let us honor their memory, by allowing it to be our turn to wake up and get going! Let there be no shrunken cloth, let there be no old wineskins.
Father Francisco Gómez, S.T