It is now just a few months since the death of Fr Kevin de Loughry your former parish priest.

It would be perfectly understandable if not a few of you were thrown into turmoil at his passing. Suddenly you are confronted with a new situation and your pastoral care has been entrusted to someone perhaps a little less familiar.

You have passed from an avuncular smiling Irish priest - who built with you, this magnificent church. You have passed from this familiar figure to a pleasant young Trinidadian by the name of Allan Mohammed.

Still, the lingering question nags at your spirit. What does the future hold?

It is also a year since my father died, not long after he attended your Kwéyòl Mass for the first time. I remember that immediately after his retirement, Dad found it difficult adjusting to not having anything to do. I looked for a way to help him or to at least understand his situation. One week, the church placed before us this identical reading.

I was struck by the phrase new wine fresh skins! I realised that the “new wine” was really his new situation of retirement. The old wineskin was therefore the habits, the attitudes and strategies that served him while he was a working, active man.

The new wineskins were appropriate for a retired man: a love of relaxation, an interesting hobby, the embrace of advancing age. Using the new wineskin meant inhabiting and embracing his new condition without fear and anxiety.

We all know how difficult this is. The prophet Isaiah in last Sunday's reading proclaims to the children of Israel as indeed he proclaims to the men and women of our own time:

No need to recall the past

No need to think about what was done before.

See I am doing a new deed,

Even now it comes to light; can you not see it?

Isaiah reproaches us for our tendency to escape into nostalgia – bring back dem ol' time days we sing. Isaiah encourages us to look ever forward to a future, which as scary as it might seem, is in the hands of God.

Therein lies a lesson for us all. Adaptation and change are fundamental to life. With the death of Fr Kevin, the Paramin community has had to confront this “ new wine ” of change. We can either move forward steupsing, kicking and screaming or we can do so with confidence in God and ourselves.

As citizens of Trinidad and Tobago and of the wider Caribbean , we will have to cling to this lesson of change and adaptation in the years to come. One of the features of the modern landscape is the worldwide formation of regional blocs and the move towards political and economic integration.

The recent inauguration of the CSME, said to be the most integrated political entity after the European Union adequately illustrates this point. With this move, there would be a greater presence of foreigners on our shores and we will be confronted with the challenges posed by cultural diversity.

In this context our Kwéyòl culture could be a new wineskin helping us to deal with the new wine of integration and globalisation. By virtue of your kweyolité, you are international people.

Kwéyòl culture reminds us that we are linked by history and by language and that despite apparent differences in our politics, Caribbean people share a common heritage. The multilingual person is better prepared for living in a multicultural environment.

Kwéyòl can be a springboard to integration if it ceases to be something that we keep just to ourselves. It is not enough if our annual celebration of this Kwéyòl Mass is only about preserving our beautiful little village and remembering the “ole time days”.

Kwéyòl has to stop being a language to keep others out we business . In order for Kwéyòl to flourish it has to cross its own boundaries and make itself understood by all.

The practice of Kwéyòl must therefore be accompanied by serious, organised attempts at imparting the language to the young and increasing the number of Kwéyòl speakers in our respective national communities.

We cannot continue to see ourselves as bystanders in world history. There are some forty odd Caribbean-style Carnivals around the world. We are called to see ourselves as a global civilisation and embrace our responsibility to foster the enrichment of humanity.

The old images of ourselves, –our resentment over the many wrongs meted out to our ancestors, like the old wineskins we must discard. Our vocation is to transcend this bitter past and reach out to the world.

As a religious community, Catholics are profoundly affected by the changing modern landscape. With increasing diversity of modern society comes greater religious pluralism and tolerance but also a tendency to what we know as relativism. Some of us look to what society approves as the source of right and wrong.

There are others whose motto is “Do your own thing” – the only criterion for deciding right and wrong is personal satisfaction. Then there are those who depend on emotions. They tell us “whatever I feel comfortable with is good”. From all sides the Catholic claim to infallible moral doctrine is being challenged.

In the Catholic News , Archbishop Gilbert notes that “the moral theology of the Catholic Church is, without question, counter cultural to the growing valueless lifestyle of so many people in international society”. Some have responded to this state of confusion by a great insistence on rules and old traditions.

Teaching our young people about right and wrong by going back to the rule-book with the Ten Commandments as the starting point is like pouring new wine into old wineskins. The new wineskins, the new strategy that we need is getting to the centre of things to understand why we live the way we do.

For the Pharisees and disciples of John in today's Gospel, fasting had become almost a reflex. Jesus shows us that they really did not understand why they did what they did. As Catholics we must remember that Christian morality is our lived response to God's love. My attraction to God forms the motivation for doing good and avoiding evil.

Christian morality asks the question “What kind of person should I be and what kinds of things should I do in response to God who first loved me?”

It is not primarily about rules but about my own free personal loving response to God who loved me and who frees me. Our Catholicism is not just a label we wear to tell us apart from other churches. It is that total human response to God who is love.

The second thing we have to remember is that Catholic tradition rests on the conviction that there is an objective moral order in the universe. There are actions which elevate human beings and there are actions which harm them.

Our humanity is not so different that each person is vested with their own personal morality. I pray that you and I “get to the centre of things” and try to discover why we do what we do. I pray that in so doing we discover the new wineskins to deal with the new wine of social change.

For the people of Paramin and for the rest of the Caribbean linked by the Kwéyòl language, I pray that we bravely enter into the future and that we see our Kwéyòl heritage as a valuable asset, enabling us to deal fruitfully with the problems of cultural diversity and the new wine of globalisation.