The passage of Matthew 9:14-17, contains the short parable of New Wine in New Wineskins: we can't put new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise it would mean a double ruin: both the wine and the wineskin would be wasted. The parable points to the impossibility of conversing with old mentalities. In the same passage, there is also a comparison of the old and the new cloaks. No one tears a new cloak to stitch on to an old cloak. Otherwise it is a double ruin.
The new wine is the symbol of Jesus' actions and teachings. This new wine needs new mentalities and attitudes. You can't have the old forms of religion to contain Jesus' spirit, and these forms need to be flexible like new wineskins. New wineskins imply flexibility, and the ability to breathe. The document published by the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, on January 6, 2017, uses this parable as an inspiration to give us guidelines and orientations related to the challenges of consecrated life. It says, “Institutional, religious, and symbolic forms need to be flexible always. Without the necessary flexibility, no institutional form, no matter how venerable, can withstand the tensions of life or respond to the appeals of history.” Change is the only way forward. The only reality that is constant is change itself.
To follow Jesus is to follow a Person, not a set of rules and concepts. His spirit can't be contained in words or structures; we need to be ever flexible in our mind and in our religious forms in order to be faithful to him. He himself is the Way! One cannot fall in love with concepts, but only with a Person.
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