Friday of the 22nd Week of Ordinary Time
So let a man think of us as Christ's servants and stewards of God's mysteries. Here, moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful. But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you, or by a human court. Yes, I don't even judge my own self. For I know nothing against myself. Yet I am not justified by this, but he who judges me is the Lord. Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts. Then each man will get his praise from God.
Trust in the Lord, and do good. Dwell in the land, and enjoy safe pasture. Also delight yourself in the Lord, And he will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the Lord. Trust also in him, and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine out like light, And your justice as the noon day sun.
Depart from evil, and do good. Live securely forever. For the Lord loves justice, And doesn't forsake his saints. They are preserved forever, But the children of the wicked shall be cut off.
But the salvation of the righteous is from the Lord. He is their stronghold in the time of trouble. The Lord helps them and rescues them. He rescues them from the wicked and saves them, Because they have taken refuge in him.
They said to him, "Why do John's disciples often fast and pray, likewise also the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink?"
He said to them, "Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while 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 a parable to them. "No one puts a piece from a new garment on an old garment, or else he will tear the new, and also the piece from the new will not match the old. No one puts new wine into old wineskins, or else the new wine will burst the skins, and it will be spilled and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved. No man having drunk old wine immediately desires new, for he says, 'The old is better.'"
There's something almost playful in the way Jesus responds to his critics here. They want to know why his disciples aren't fasting like everyone else — and instead of defending a practice, he reframes the whole question. The issue isn't fasting versus feasting. The issue is: what time is it? And more importantly, who is with us?
The image of the bridegroom is worth sitting with. In Jewish tradition, a wedding celebration could last seven days, and during that time, mourning practices — including fasting — were suspended. Joy had its own demands. Jesus is saying: something new has broken into the world, and the old categories don't quite fit anymore.
That's where the parables of cloth and wine come in. Notice how Jesus doesn't say the old is bad — he says the new and old can't simply be stitched together without damage to both. New wine needs new wineskins precisely because it's still alive, still fermenting. The old wineskins have lost their elasticity. What emerges from these images is a gentle warning against assuming that faithfulness means simply doing what we've always done, in the way we've always done it.
Paul echoes something similar in the first reading. The steward's job isn't to manage appearances or satisfy critics — it's to be faithful to the one who actually judges. And that judgment belongs to God alone, who sees what's hidden, who knows the heart's true motives. There's a real freedom in that. We don't have to perform faithfulness for an audience.
The psalm holds it all together: commit your way to the Lord. Not your outcomes. Not your reputation. Your way.
So as this Friday unfolds, consider:
Where might we be clinging to old wineskins — habits, assumptions, or defenses — that no longer serve the life growing within us?
What would it look like to trust God's judgment today rather than managing how others see us?
And in the ordinary moments of this afternoon, is there a quiet joy we might be too busy, or too guarded, to notice?