Fasting

Monday, January 15, 2018
2nd Week in
Ordinary Time
1st Reading: 1
Sam 15:16-23
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. They were so fixated about fasting that instead of doing it once a year on the Day of Atonement as required by the Law, they fasted weekly. In fact they fasted twice a week! This attitude blocked all entries to the new law of love that Jesus was introducing.
Jesus came to earth to introduce a new form of spirituality that could not be sustained by fasting laws crafted in the past. He said, “No one sews a piece of new cloth on an old coat…” To legitimize their opposition the Pharisees cited that John the Baptist too fasted more often. But it was not 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, it was fitting that spirituality shifted to the celebration in joy of God’s presence. Comparing himself to a bridegroom that had arrived, Jesus asked: “How can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?” The Jews had to loosen their grip on the past, not because the past was wrong but because the present was the time to rejoice in the Lord because Jesus had arrived.
L.P. Hartley did not mean to undermine the value of the past when he wrote that it is a foreign country. What is foreign is not necessarily bad. But we have to understand that even as we do the same good things that we used to do then, there is always a better way of doing the same that would accommodate not just the good but the better; not just the better but the best. – (Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., D.M.