Fasting

Monday, January 16, 2017
2nd Week in Ordinary Time
1st Reading: Heb. 5:1-10
Gospel: Mark 2:18-22

One day, when the disciples of John the Baptist and the Pharisees were fasting, some people asked Jesus, “Why is it that both the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast, but yours do not?” Jesus answered, “How 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 day will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them and on that day they will fast.

No one sews a piece of new cloth on an old coat, because the new patch will shrink and tear away from the old cloth, making a worse tear. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins, for the wine would burst the skins and then both the wine and the skins would be lost. But new wine, new skins!”

D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)

“The past”, wrote L.P. Hartley, “is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” To impose the past as the absolute determinant of how the present should proceed can be regressive. While the past can be a good teacher, it must not nip in the bud new possibilities fit for the present. Consider the case of the Jews. Their fixations about the past made them stiff in their customary practices. The Pharisees, for example, were so fixated about fasting that instead of fasting once a year on the Day of Atonement, they fasted twice a week.

This attitude blocked all entries to the new law that Jesus was introducing. He came to earth to introduce a new form of spirituality that cannot be sustained by fasting laws crafted in the past. He said, “No one sews a piece of new cloth on an old coat…” The Pharisees dragged in the fasting tradition observed by John the Baptist to legitimize their opposition. But that of John the Baptist’s fasting practices, although more sober than those of the Pharisees, was still tied to the past where salvation had not yet dawned. With the dawning of salvation in the time of Jesus, perspectives had to change.
It was not therefore a question of whether or not John the Baptist was correct in fasting more often. It was a question of perspective. In the perspective of the New Commandment of love, it was fitting that spirituality shifted to the celebration in joy of God’s presence. Comparing himself to a bridegroom and in effect announcing that the bridegroom had arrived, Jesus asked: “How can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?” The past had to free the Jews not because it was wrong in imposing frequent fasting but because the present was the time to rejoice in the Lord because Jesus had arrived. – (Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., D.M.
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