Friday, September 07, 2018
22nd Week in
Ordinary Time
1st Reading: 1 Cor 4:1-5
Gospel: Luke 5:33-39
The scribes and Pharisees asked Jesus, “The disciples of John fast often and say long prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees. Why is it that your disciples eat and drink?” Then Jesus said to them, “You can’t make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them. But later the bridegroom will be taken from them and they will fast in those days.”
Jesus also told them this parable, “No one tears a piece from a new coat to put it on an old one; otherwise the new will be torn and the piece taken from the new will not match the old. (…)”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
The Pharisees began to compare their followers with the followers of Jesus. They noticed that Jesus’ disciples ate more but prayed less. In contrast their followers, recited long prayers and fasted more often than required by law. So they asked Jesus for some clarifications. Jesus explained: The wedding guests are not supposed to fast while the groom is still with them.
We can infer from Jesus’ explanation that he wanted people to celebrate the blessings of life as often as possible. The Eucharist, which in essence is a festive table celebration, establishes Jesus’ preference for joyful discipleship. But the fact that he spent the last minutes of his earthly life bequeathing the Holy Eucharist to his followers establishes his intention to make joy the hallmark of discipleship.
The joy of discipleship is deeper than happiness. Happiness depends on happenings; joy is rooted deep down in the heart. Happiness makes a person a slave of contingencies. Joy, empowers a person to persevere as witness to faith in times of prosperity and crisis. He becomes like light that persists in shining brightly even when surrounded by darkness. A disciple changes his gloomy surrounding by the joy that he radiates from deep down his heart.
Joyous discipleship is not evasive of suffering. On the contrary, it looks forward to it without however seeking it out. Suffering that comes to us as a result of the evil exercise of freedom of other persons, is meritorious suffering. This we freely embrace. But suffering resulting from our vices and evil deeds is inconsistent with joyous discipleship. This we timely avoid by abandoning vices and evil deeds.
When Jesus explained that the wedding guests are not supposed to fast while the groom is still with them, he wanted to say that there is time for joy and there is time for suffering. But even the time for suffering surrenders itself to the realm of joy when it is the salvific kind that takes one closer to the Lord. – (Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., D.M.
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