Friday, September 4, 2026
Friday of the Twenty-second week in Ordinary Time
Luke 5:33-39
Listen to the whole reading — MP3
First reading
1 Corinthians 4:1-5
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 man’s judgment. Yes, I don’t 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.
Responsorial psalm
Psalms 37:3-4,5-6,27-28,39-40
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 go out as the 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.
Gospel
Luke 5:33-39
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 wine skins, 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 wine skins, and both are preserved. No man having drunk old wine immediately desires new, for he says, ‘The old is better.’”
Lectio
There is a quiet freedom in Paul's words that most of us never taste. He has arrived somewhere: he no longer needs the verdict of the Corinthians, and — more startling — he does not even trust his own verdict on himself. "I know nothing against myself. Yet I am not justified by this." He has handed the whole matter of his worth over to the only One who sees the counsels of hearts. This is not indifference; it is rest. He has stopped carrying a weight that was never his to carry, and he waits, unhurried, for the Lord who will bring the hidden things into light in His own time.
And perhaps this is why the Gospel refuses to let us reduce faith to fasting and grim effort. The disciples do not fast because the Bridegroom is with them. Joy is not a distraction from holiness — it is the sign that Someone has arrived. Jesus warns against sewing His newness onto the old garment of our anxious self-measuring, our need to be seen as good. New wine cannot be poured into brittle skins. If we are still living for the world's judgment, or for the harsh audit we keep running on ourselves, the new life He offers will simply burst us and spill out.
Notice the last line, so gently sad: "No man having drunk old wine immediately desires new, for he says, 'The old is better.'" We cling to the familiar, even when the familiar is a cage. Trust in the Lord, the Psalm says, and He will give you the desires of your heart — but first He must give you new desires, new skins to hold them.
Whose judgment of you are you still carrying today, and what would it feel like to hand that verdict over to the Lord instead?
Where in your life have you said "the old is better" simply because the new that God is offering would ask you to change?
Saint of the day
St. Rosalia, Layperson († 1160)
Ora reads this aloud, every morning, free. Ora