Gospel : Mark 2.18-22

In the final verse of the Gospel reading, Our Lord reminded us that if we put new wine into old wine skins the skins will explode – we are to put our new wine into new wine skins. Very often that saying is taken as meaning that what is new is good and what is old is poor. In fact, rather like Donald Rumsfeld talking pityingly about the “Old Europe” which disagrees with him, as distinct from a new shiny up-to-date Europe which just happens to be on his side.

However I do not for one moment imagine that Jesus was saying that only what is new is good. (In fact, if we go on thinking about wine for a moment, what is old and a good vintage is regarded as far better than a wine that has just been bottled.) No, I believe that Jesus was saying something far more valuable. He is telling us that there is a place for what is new and a place for what is inherited from the wisdom of the past. We need to realise that there is a profound value in both but that we should never confuse the one with the other or imagine that they can always be put together without pain or misunderstanding. And so, you can place this saying of our Lord alongside another famous comment of his in Matthew’s Gospel, the saying that when a spiritual leader becomes a disciple of the Kingdom of Heaven he is like a householder who can bring wonderful things out from his collection, “treasures both new and old.”

And if I was asked what excites me most about the Community of Sant’Egidio it would be that there is a wonderful newness, a sense of new thinking and a thirst for new adventures, but a newness which is nevertheless rooted in what we have inherited from the best there is in the tradition of the entire Christian Church - obedience to the Word of God and a joyful discipline of private prayer and shared worship, treasures new and old, new refreshing wine and the greatest vintage that there could ever be. The two must both be on the menu. And it is very important that we as Christian disciples never allow ourselves to go off on some exciting glamorous excursion (even one which people will admire) while leaving the spiritual route map – the route map of prayer and Gospel - behind us.

A few of us here have recently returned from a wonderful journey to Rome to celebrate the thirty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Community. This anniversary was celebrated in a conference under the general headline of Il Vangelo della Pace, “The Gospel of Peace”, a meeting principally of bishops and pastors. Much of what happened there in Rome will truly remain with me for the rest of my earthly life, but one remarkable confluence has come back into my mind repeatedly. It was a morning we began by sharing with a group of Orthodox Christians in their morning prayers, in an Daily Office which is probably unchanged in more than a thousand years. But we moved straight from there to hear of Sant’Egidio’s campaign to bring new cutting edge medical technology to the treatment of AIDS sufferers in Mozambique. Old wine and new wine and yet both brought together by the simple integrated conviction that all human life will reach its fulfilment only if it is subject to the Word of God and if Christian disciples set themselves not merely to pray, but also to answer in their lives and actions the prayers of the deprived and weak of the world.

But we are here tonight not only to celebrate in worship the continuing work under God of the spiritual initiative of a young student, Andrea Riccardi, thirty five years ago, in founding the Community of Sant’Egidio. We are here also to pray together in a Mass for peace, and to ask the Lord to guide us as to how we can bring the old and the new - our obedience to Gospel and prayer and the realities of a violent frightened world - into some focus. And, in one of those encounters in the conference in Rome last month, the same Andrea Riccardi (no longer a young student but now a university professor), reminded us that we as Christians must never be afraid of the powers of this world. Nor, he said, must we ever be so faithless as to believe that we can do nothing to change the world.

No, we must not be afraid. Perhaps one thing we have seen in Western Europe in these past weeks is that we do not need to be in awe of the power of politicians. We are now seeing politicians changing their minds when they see the sincerity and conviction of ordinary men and women of principle. One of Andrea Riccardi’s one-liners was that politics cannot safely be left to politicians. It sounds like another sound-bite, even a cliché, doesn’t it, until you realise its powerful truth? Good people can change politicians. They can give courage to those in authority, who perhaps only need to be reminded that their God-given consciences, as distinct from their political adherence, might actually be right. Today in Ireland are we not being led into a political and ethical fog, a moral smog of waiting to see what will happen and then being told that this was always the state’s policy? Can we strengthen the hearts of those in political life who are so clearly afraid?

There is old wine which can sustain us in this. This is the tradition common to all Christian peoples of seeking out whether a war may indeed be just or not. We are being called to ask, humbly and prayerfully, as individual Christians who must one day answer to God, not only what constitutes a lawful or a moral declaration of war, but also

• whether greater evil and suffering will result if war with Iraq is waged in our name and on our behalf?
• whether the motive for going to war is pure, or is vengeful, or is economic?
• whether the end result of such a war for a people who are already starving and diseased may not be worse rather than better?

And never, never disregard or discount the tradition of prayer, the precious wine of prayer. prayer not only so that we may seek God’s will, God’s purpose and God’s wisdom for our own decision-making, but also the power of prayer that will change the world. Because although prayer is often seen by outsiders as the resort of the weak and powerless, prayer does change things - prayer changes situations, it changes people and it changes us.

And so you and I are called by God to make a difference. Part of the exhilaration of the new wine which is so much the characteristic of Sant’Egidio is the realisation that we know that moral authority is not just the preserve of those set in positions of leadership within the structures of the State or the structures of the Church. Would so much that has been achieved for good in the world by Sant’Egidio have happened if you had waited for the go-ahead from the powerful of Church or State? In baptism you were each given a great responsibility for individual moral responsibility, and so for real moral authority. You and I can make a difference. You and I must make a difference in a world of fear, of futility, and of helplessness. You and I can make peace.

Because you are the People of God. You are the new wine of the Kingdom of God.