Gospel: Matthew 9:14-17
Then the disciples of John came to him with the question, “How is it, that we and the Pharisees fast on many occasions, but not your disciples?”
Jesus answered them, “How can you expect wedding guests to mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The time will come, when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then, they will fast.
No one patches an old coat with a piece of unshrunken cloth, for the patch will shrink and tear an even bigger hole in the coat. In the same way, you don’t put new wine into old wine skins. If you do, the wine skins will burst and the wine will be spilt. No, you put new wine into fresh skins; then both are preserved.”

Reflections
“Put new wine into fresh skins to preserve both.”
At play in this gospel passage is the tension between to fast and not to fast. However, the main point here is the identity of Jesus. The disciples of John advanced the surface issue of fasting, but Jesus redirected their focus to a deeper concern, that is, His identity as the “bride- groom,” as the Messiah.
As the one who calls for repentance and grants forgiveness of sins, Jesus celebrates when one is reconciled back to God, as in the case of Matthew, the other tax collectors and sinners who gathered in his house. Having repented and having been forgiven and reconciled to God are a definitive reason for Jesus to celebrate. In this way, the inauguration of the kingdom of God in Jesus public ministry has brought a radically new dimension to the religious practices of John’s disciples and the other Jewish groups at that time. Fasting needs to be maintained, together with the celebration of God’s mercy that Jesus brought while awaiting his return (Brendan Byrne). By introducing this, Jesus transformed an understanding of fasting or mourning that is now able to accommodate the celebration of God’s mercy.

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