THE WORD
Hb 5,1-10/Mk 2, 18-22
The disciples of John and of the Pharisees were accustomed to fast. People came to him and objected, "Why do the disciples of John and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?" Jesus answered them, "Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them they cannot fast. But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old cloak. If he does, its fullness pulls away, the new from the old, and the tear gets worse. Likewise, no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the skins are ruined. Rather, new wine is poured into fresh wineskins.
IN OTHER WORDS
Jesus showed the religious world then something totally new and unprecedented: everyone else who had disciples required fasting but Jesus did not require it from his followers. While they were with him, there was constant celebration.
With Jesus, we are with God Himself. With other leaders, their followers are simply with a mortal being. Jesus had a new message to proclaim: the Kingdom of God, likened many times to a wedding feast where everyone is connected to each other by virtue of one's relationship with the bridegroom. Fasting during a wedding would then be out of place. Only when the bridegroom has left will fasting make sense. Jesus here uses the phrase "taken away" to mean his death and separation from his followers. Yet this point didn't really make any sense until it actually happened on that night he was arrested and eventually crucified the next day. It was during these moments of loss and grief, then, when fasting became a natural experience. This now becomes the new way of understanding why we fast on Good Friday when we commemorate the Passion of the Lord.
From this Good Friday episode, one realizes the meaning of fasting. We fast when we have something in us that has been "taken away" — the bridegroom from our midst and our sins that crucified him. We abstain from the pleasures that are due us when we realize his absence in our lives. By fasting we mourn the death of the bridegroom, the death of the Lord. What greater joy can we ever have than being with the Lord and Him being with us again! This joy He so easily gave back to us when He rose again from the dead.
• Fr. R. Collera, SVD (DWC,
The Word in other words 2017
An annual project of Logos Publications, The WORD in Other Words Bible Diary contains daily scripture readings and reflections written by priest, brothers, and sisters of the three congregations founded by St. Arnold Janssen (the SVD, SSpS, and SSpSAP). It hopes to serve as a daily companion to readers who continually seek the correlation of the Word of God and human experience.
