Old Wine from New Wineskins

“New Wineskins”

This week I live-streamed Morning Prayer for the second straight week. I’m not sure how to feel about the whole thing. I love Morning Prayer and I’m certainly happy to be able to get into the homes of parishioners and others while public gatherings are prohibited. A part of me hopes that some of the parishioners will grow to love the service enough to want to continue using it in some form. That would be great. There’s also something quite special about going into the chapel with my family and holding the service together while others gather around us virtually. It is pretty rewarding in some unexpected ways. What follows that service, though, is bizarre.

When Morning Prayer is complete and the live-stream has ended, my family heads through the door into the main church and we set up for Mass. While I prepare the vessels for the Eucharist, my wife sits at a keyboard and noodles through a hymn or two. That’s quite nice. My daughter roams around the sanctuary and explores the imagery on the furniture. That’s quite nice, too. For the service, my wife provides the response throughout and my daughter rings the Sanctus Bells (she’s getting the hang of it.) That’s all very nice. The rest of it isn’t great.

In the entire time I’ve been a priest, I’ve only missed saying Mass four times, and three of those were during blizzards. Every other Sunday (even while on vacation) I’ve celebrated the Holy Mysteries at least once. (I currently serve two parishes and celebrate in each building every Sunday and did the same at my previous post.) I often times cover a weekly Healing Service at the local cathedral. That means that many weeks I celebrate at least three times. It has never been like this. Celebrating the Mass Sine Populo, without a congregation, is somehow filled with a tangible lack. There is something so vastly different that goes beyond the physical lack of a congregation, or the emotional lack community. Yes, it fulfills my obligation to celebrate and the spiritual component of creating that liminal moment of the Eucharistic Prayer is intact. Yes, sharing it with my family in the strange pattern we’re settling into is wonderful. But no matter how well my head justifies the whole thing, my heart just can’t wrap itself around what’s happening.

After that first Sunday, I thought the problem might be that I was trying to make it feel the same when it so clearly cannot. How could it feel the same when it is all so different? I leaned in to the idea by picking up a very different type of wine. The parish we’re using for the service (the one with wifi for the live-stream) uses a dry white wine for the Eucharist. I went way out of tradition and got a bottle of Pinot Noir, a deep red, in hopes that it would highlight the differences and help me find those places where it is the same. *Spoiler Alert!!* It didn’t work. Not at all. I had hoped that it would feel different, but in a good way. Instead, my wife and I were both disappointed in the wine itself and I was no more impressed with my internal connection to the Mass.

Here’s the problem: I’m trying to get old wine from a very new wineskin. St. Matthew’s Gospel addresses the problem of putting new wine in an old wineskin, saying, “if [you] do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out, and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved. (Matthew 9-17) The problem here, isn’t trying to put something new into an old structure. The problem is trying to get something old from a very new structure. I’m carrying a new wineskin and deeply dissatisfied that the wine doesn’t taste the same.

It makes me uncomfortable, but it will pass. Not just the lockdown, that will be lifted at some point, but the discomfort. It will pass. I’ll begin to get comfortable with the new wineskins of virtual services and being shut in. The wineskin will soften and I’ll learn to appreciate it. I’ll even learn to savor the new wine. Right now it seems bitter (at times it is more like vinegar,) but over time I’ll develop a taste for it. And eventually, I’ll have the old wine again. That will be a sweet day. Hopefully, I’ll find room for both wines. Now that would make for a truly Heavenly Banquet.