What is your attitude toward changes? Do you welcome them or do you avoid them? - Daily Reflections January 19,2015

NEW WINE INTO FRESH WINE SKINS

 

I have no experience in making wine. Perhaps none of us who live in the country has any either, contrary to the claims of one company which does not even have a vineyard. But I have some experience about patching things like cloths, and both leather and rubber balls.

       Back in high school seminary days, we had what we innocently referred to as the “ball room.” No, it is not the place where people dance. It was nothing but a small back room where we kept all the balls we played with, and that meant basketball, football, softball and volleyball.

       The ball room in-charge would take care of repairing old, torn balls that would be the end product of our daily skirmishes at the playing field or court. Torn balls were never thrown away. They were used to repair old balls as, by experience, one would never patch an old ball with a piece taken from a new ball. It just doesn’t work. It would first of all form a bulge and would eventually destroy the old ball sooner than expected. New patch for new balls; old patch for old balls. That was the way it worked.

       I guess adaptation would be the term for this. In real life, change is inevitable, but the way change is to be applied has to consider the issue of gradual adaptation. Prudence is connected to this. One does not ride roughshod on the old by patching whatever is the latest, the newest and the faddish.

       St. Augustine has a beautiful prayer that reflects the necessary gelling and integration of both the old and the new. In turn, it reflects the marriage of both the Old and the New Testaments that the Lord Himself has done. He did not come to destroy the old, but to perfect it. “Late have I loved You, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new!”

       What is old is not necessarily bad, and what is new is not necessarily good. The key is integrating the new with the old, and this requires adaptation with a lot of prudence. Fr. Chito Dimaranan, SDB

 

REFLECTION QUESTIONS: What is your attitude toward changes? Do you welcome them or do you avoid them?

 

Lord, grant me prudence and wisdom to adapt the good in the new and throw away the bad in the old.