The title of this episode of Communio Santorum is A Glimmer of Reform.I assume most listening to this are students of history, or—why would you be listening? Some like history in general. Others find a fascination with certain eras or moments of the past. Whatever your interest, every student recognizes that as time passes, things change. Sometimes that change is merely incidental to the thing changed, a cosmetic difference that does little to the substance. Other change is deep, fundamentally altering the thing changed; and in some cases, doing away with it altogether.Institutions and beliefs held for long periods can be swept away in a matter of days, while others abide for centuries without being touched.Jesus challenged the Guardians of Tradition of His day with the Parable of the Wine-skins. The point of the parable is that while truth doesn’t change, the container it’s put in and dispensed from will change, it MUST change. The rabbinic and Pharisaical Judaism of Jesus’ day had become an inflexible complex of traditions that obscured the Spirit behind the Law. The Rabbis and Pharisees played an important role after the Babylonian Captivity in moving the Jews away from their age old tendency to idolatry. But their exaltation of tradition had become so rigid it ended up missing what the Law of Moses was intended to promote. Jesus came to cut through the thick vines of tradition and make a path back to God.Sadly, some seem to think the parable of the wineskins only referred to 1st C Judaism. They don’t realize what Jesus said is an abiding truth with application to every age; including the Church. Historically, God births a fresh move of the Spirit and people are mobilized to maximize the effect of that movement. Spiritual inspiration builds a structure, a vehicle for the movement to take place in and through. But as time passes, man makes policies and procedures regulate the movement. They’re needed so people can work together. Leaders want to ensure future members of the movement know where they came from and why. The problem is, those policies and procedures often become a limit, a line, a defining mark that says, “This is us, and beyond that line is NOT us. This is who we are; we are not that. This is what we do, we do NOT do that.”Traditions. à Which can be good and necessary for passing on values and identity; but can get in the way of hearing what else God might say.All of this is crucial to the next phase of Churchy History we’re looking at. So bear with me as I use an illustration I hope makes all this clear.Let’s say as a young Christian, I’m addicted to TV. I watch TV hours a day. What I watch isn’t the issue – just that I spend way too much time on it. At church one day, while in worship, I’m convicted about the TV, so I decide to only watch an hour each night, and spend the rest of the time reading, visiting other Christians and volunteering at the local mission.I experience such amazing spiritual growth, I decided to forego TV altogether.  After a couple months of astounding deepening, I get angry at all the time I wasted and come to loath TV. So I take it out to the dumpster and toss it. I now abhor TV and when invited over to a friend’s house on the weekend, when he turns on the TV, I excuse myself and go home. As I drive home I grumble about how immature he is for watching TV. After that I use every opportunity I have to “encourage” others to turn off their TV’s and spend that time in more profitable and God-honoring ways. Several of my friends see major spiritual progress and become equally energetic in their anti-TV crusade as I. We form a group that makes watching TV a test as to whether or not someone is a real follower of Jesus. Then something interesting happens. The loss of visual entertainment moves a couple in the group to suggest we start performing dramas that enact Biblical stories and faith lessons. An acting group forms that stages weekly plays. And three years