Lectio Divina – Saturday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Independence Day (USA)
Theme: “Worse”
1. Lectio
Gospel – Matthew 9:16–17
> “No one patches an old cloak with a piece of unshrunken cloth, for its fullness pulls away from the cloak and the tear gets worse.”
Matthew alone uses that wonderfully unsettling word: worse. Christ is not opposed to the old because it is old, nor enamored of the new because it is new. He simply refuses to let the Kingdom of God become another patch sewn onto a garment already tearing apart. The Gospel is not cosmetic repair. It is new creation.
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2. Meditatio
By far, Rojo is the finest Livestock Guardian Dog I have ever owned. Although he still wears a virtual fence collar, he almost never tests its boundaries. On the rare occasions he crosses them—usually because some coyote has forgotten where its boundaries are—he promptly returns to the sheep to which he has freely given his life.
Ironically, the very collar that once taught him his boundaries has now become a danger. The thick plastic traps the summer heat against his neck. Hot spots have begun to form beneath it. Left untreated, they could become infected, grow worse, even become septic. What once protected him now threatens him.
So today I face a decision. I can cling to my old method because it has worked in the past, or I can acknowledge that Rojo has matured. Freedom is no longer the enemy of faithfulness. Perhaps keeping the collar on him is now the greater danger.
I cannot help wondering how often I do this in my own spiritual life. I mistake control for stewardship. I confuse caution with prudence. I continue using methods that once served the Gospel but now obscure it.
The same temptation appears in society. As Pope Benedict XVI observed in Caritas in Veritate, we often treat the symptoms of economic, social, and ecological crises while refusing to question the very systems that generate them. We attempt to patch an old garment while the tear quietly grows worse. We seek endless economic growth without asking whether it serves the common good or merely enlarges inequality. We congratulate ourselves for mitigating problems while continuing patterns of production and consumption that deepen them.
Today, on Independence Day, I celebrate freedom. Yet freedom is never merely freedom from. It is freedom for—freedom to become what God created me to be. Rojo’s collar reminds me that true liberty is not lawlessness; it is the fruit of trust. The goal of discipline is not perpetual restraint but mature communion.
This week another image of old garments and new wine has occupied my thoughts. The recent excommunications connected with the Society of Saint Pius X reminds me that the deepest wounds in the Church are seldom healed by pretending the Second Vatican Council never happened, nor by pretending everything before it should be discarded. Christ does not ask us to pour the new wine of Vatican II into rigid old wineskins, nor to throw away the vineyard that produced the wine in the first place. He calls His Church to remain one Body, ever ancient and ever new, continually reformed by the Holy Spirit without severing herself from her roots. Whenever we cling so tightly to yesterday that we cannot receive today’s grace, the tear only becomes worse.
Today the Church also celebrates Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati for the first time on the universal calendar. He lived only twenty-four years, yet he somehow managed to climb mountains, serve the poor, laugh with friends, pray deeply, and remain passionately faithful to Christ. He never treated holiness as preserving an antique museum. He wore the Gospel like fresh clothing, proving that sanctity is not nostalgia but joyful discipleship. He did not patch Christ onto his life; he allowed Christ to become his life.
Perhaps that is what Jesus is asking of me at The Glenn. Not simply to improve my old way of farming. Not simply to improve my old way of believing. But to let the Gospel continually make all things new before the tear gets worse.
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3. Oratio
Lord Jesus,
I confess that I often cling to what once worked simply because it is familiar. I fear the freedom You wish to give because it asks me to trust more than to control.
Teach me when to loosen the collar, when to repair, and when to begin anew. Keep me from disguising fear as prudence or nostalgia as fidelity.
Heal the places in my life where old habits rub against the new work of Your Spirit. Heal Your Church wherever old wounds continue to fester. Preserve her unity without sacrificing truth, and preserve truth without sacrificing charity.
On this Independence Day, grant me the only freedom that finally matters: the freedom to belong completely to You.
Amen.
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4. Contemplatio (Chestertonian Synthesis)
Chesterton once delighted in reminding us that tradition is not the worship of ashes but the preservation of fire. A museum preserves old clothes behind glass; a family mends garments only long enough to wear them until new ones are needed. Christ did not come to found a museum of first-century religion but a living Body forever young because its Head has conquered death.
Rojo has taught me that the purpose of every collar is eventually to become unnecessary. A restraint that once formed fidelity can become an obstacle to it if I refuse to recognize what grace has accomplished. So too the Christian life. God disciplines me not to keep me forever under restraint but to bring me into the glorious freedom of His children.
Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati climbed mountains because he believed holiness always moves upward. Christ climbed a hill because He knew love always moves outward. And today, on Independence Day, I discover that genuine freedom is neither doing whatever I wish nor preserving everything exactly as it once was. Freedom is allowing Christ to remove every collar, every wineskin, every habit that keeps His grace from fermenting into joy.
For the tear does not become worse because Christ makes things new.
It becomes worse whenever I refuse to let Him.
Saturday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time and Independence Day
