Friday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

There are days when faith feels like juggling—duties, disciplines, and devotions tossed into the air with little sense of a center. Today’s Scriptures recentre everything in a single radiating truth: Christ is not a part of life; he is its core. When he is present, even our practices take on a different tone; when he seems absent, we learn to hunger rightly.

Christ, the Center Who Holds All Things Together (Col 1:15–20)

Paul’s hymn to Christ shatters any small, manageable image of Jesus. He is “the image of the invisible God,” the One “in whom all things hold together” and through whom the Father “reconcile[s] all things … making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col 1:15–20). This is not a privatized spirituality; it is the cosmic scope of salvation. The One who knits the galaxies together is the same Lord who binds anxious hearts and fractured communities into a single Body.

St. Ignatius of Antioch loved to linger on this paradox: the cosmic Lord made truly present in the flesh. Against early denials of Christ’s real humanity, Ignatius insisted that our reconciliation comes by Christ’s real suffering and blood. Today’s hymn agrees: peace is not an abstract ideal but hard-won, poured out from the Cross (Col 1:20). In an age that feels splintered—politically, digitally, even within the soul—this passage invites a deep act of trust: there is a center, and it is not us. It is Christ the Head, in whom the Church finds her form and stability (Col 1:18).

Joy in the Presence, Hunger in the Absence (Lk 5:33–35; Ps 100)

The Gospel faces an honest religious question: Why don’t Jesus’ disciples fast like John’s? Jesus replies with a wedding image: when the Bridegroom is with them, the right response is joy; when he is “taken away,” the right response is fasting (Lk 5:33–35). In other words, Christian practice is relational before it is ritual. It responds to presence and absence, consolation and desolation. Psalm 100 models the fitting response to presence: “Come with joy into the presence of the Lord” (Ps 100:2). Joy is not a perk; it is obedience to reality when the Bridegroom is near.

St. John Chrysostom helps make this concrete. Fasting, he taught, only makes sense if it is tethered to love: “Show me your fast by your works—if you see the poor, have mercy; let your mouth fast from harsh words.” The discipline isn’t dismissed; it is right-sized. When joy is the season, receive it with gratitude. When hunger is the season, let the hunger be for God—and let it widen the heart toward the hungry.

For many today, religious practices can become anxiety management—checklists to quiet fear—rather than responses to the Bridegroom’s nearness. Jesus gently reorients the heart: let practices flow from love, not from dread.

New Wine Needs Fresh Wineskins (Lk 5:36–39)

Jesus’ parables of patched cloaks and wineskins push the point further. The “new wine” of his Kingdom cannot be forced into old containers (Lk 5:36–39). Grace asks for structures that can stretch. The complaint that “the old is good” (Lk 5:39) is not an argument for tradition so much as a warning about nostalgia. The old can be good, but it can also be brittle.

What does this look like now?

If the Lord is drawing someone into deeper prayer, a “fresh wineskin” might be a small rule of life: a set time for Scripture, a weekly hour of adoration, or a phone sabbath to protect silence.
If reconciliation is stirring, the fresh wineskin might be confession, followed by concrete steps of amends and boundaries.
If the Spirit is moving a community toward service, the wineskin might be a simple, sustainable rhythm of hospitality—a monthly meal shared with those on the margins.

St. Clement of Rome saw that the Church’s ordered life—bishops, presbyters, deacons—exists not to constrain the Spirit but to create room for the new wine to be shared without spilling. Order in service of love allows the Body to move as one. The Head gives life (Col 1:18); the Body provides vessels to carry it.

Walking in the Light, Discerning the Season (Jn 8:12)

“I am the light of the world,” Jesus says; “whoever follows me will have the light of life” (Jn 8:12). Light enables discernment. Without light, even good practices collide with each other. With light, we can ask simple, luminous questions:

Where is the Bridegroom near today? Then enter with praise (Ps 100:4).
Where has he felt “taken away”? Then fast in those days (Lk 5:35)—perhaps from noise, from a corrosive habit of criticism, from the scroll that dulls desire.
What new wine is God pouring out? Then prepare fresh wineskins—habits and structures supple enough to carry grace without bursting.

Discernment is not a technique; it is a relationship lived in the light of Christ. The more one lives in that light, the more seasons become clear, and the more joy and hunger each find their rightful place.

The Optional Memorial: Saint Teresa of Calcutta’s Simple Wineskins

Today the Church also offers the optional memorial of Saint Teresa of Calcutta. Her life is a vivid commentary on these readings. She recognized the Bridegroom in “the distressing disguise of the poor” and organized the Missionaries of Charity as a fresh wineskin for new wine—daily Mass and adoration, radical simplicity, wholehearted service. Her long interior darkness did not cancel joy; it became a deep, steady hunger that purified love. In her, Colossians’ cosmic Christ became fiercely local—held in the Eucharist, touched in the dying, obeyed in the least.

Gathering the Threads

Christ is the center who holds us and our world together (Col 1:17).
Joy is the right response to his presence; fasting is the right response to his felt absence (Lk 5:33–35; Ps 100).
New wine asks for fresh wineskins: habits, structures, and communities supple enough for grace (Lk 5:36–39).
His light makes such discernment possible (Jn 8:12).