for July 4
Saturday of the Thirteenth Week of Ordinary Time

Apart from occasional alternative options for more locally observed feast days, the Church around the world uses the readings of the day. Today’s readings were not chosen for the United States’ Independence Day. But they are quite appropriate for it, especially in our current times.

In the gospel passage Jesus is, as is often the case in Matthew, seeking to explain how his Kingdom relates to the covenant established between God and Israel. He uses two images that come from everyday life of the time and are concerned with the problem of introducing something new into an old model. Wineskins dry out over time and lose their suppleness. If new wine that is still fermenting is poured into them, the gases produced will cause the brittle skins to break open. Jesus has been saying that he has come to fulfill the law that seals the old covenant, to expand its reach deeper into people’s hearts. His followers don’t yet know that he will establish a new covenant with the sacrifice of his life and give them a new ritual practice, that of sharing in his body and blood. The new covenant does not replace the old one but is joined to it like the new patch on the cloak that continues to be worn. At the same time, the fabric of the patch must be made compatible to that of the cloak “for [as St. Paul says] the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” The covenant with Israel remains and Christianity has grown from it.

Jesus’s criticisms of the Judaism of his time stemmed not from the faith itself but from the laxity and hypocrisy of its practice. Amos, as we’ve heard over the past week, had the same complaints many centuries earlier. He foresaw these attitudes would eventually lead to Israel’s destruction.  But in today’s passage, the final verses of the book, he also foresees Israel’s restoration to the promise of the covenant, in fact to an even greater glory, contentment, and fullness of life.

On this Independence Day, I feel our country finds itself in a similar place. We are all too aware that our founding document, which we celebrate today, has from the start contained an element of hypocrisy. We have embraced the idea (and ideals) of equality and inalienable rights, of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but they never applied to everyone and some have always been, as George Orwell put it, “more equal than others.” Yet the document, along with the Constitution that followed it, remain a powerful promise of a free and open society that has in its best moments embraced those shunned elsewhere, given hope and opportunity to people from around the globe, and realized many achievements that have enabled the country to prosper and contribute to the world at large. How can we right the wrongs that are so deeply rooted without losing the promise that is equally deeply rooted?

I suggest that Jesus’s images of creating something new within an existing model point the way. It’s a challenge. How do you patch a torn cloak so that it becomes a new, even more serviceable garment? What do you do with the wineskins? Do you let them go and find new receptacles for the wine or do you regenerate them so that they can hold the new wine? These are hard questions that require the expansion of hearts that Jesus calls us to. They will elicit conflicting answers which will somehow have to be reconciled. We will also have to take seriously Amos’s call to social justice and consider what small part each of us might play. And we must maintain hope that change is possible and trust that it will come if we work at it in good faith. The psalm today is a lovely vision of what such a society would look like, an apt reminder of the promise our nation was founded on. The Lord speaks of peace to his people. Are we listening?

Happy Fourth of July!
—Christine Szczepanowski

The readings can be found on the US Conference of Catholic Bishops website.