Friday, September 06, 2013 22nd Week in
Ordinary Time First Reading: Col 1: 15-20 Gospel Reading: Lk 5:33-39
Some people asked him, “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. No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed as well. But new wine must be put into fresh skins. Yet no one who has tasted old wine is eager to get new wine, but says: The old is good.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the
Assimilated Life
Experience)
Fasting in the time of Jesus was for the following purposes: to expiate for sins (Leviticus 16: 29-31), to accompany the days of mourning (Ester 4:3), to intensify prayers during the time of calamity and to satisfy the mandatory annual fasting on the Day of Atonement. The practice was notably frequent. This was still the fasting that the disciples of John the Baptist and those of the Pharisees knew and practiced. The disciples of Jesus were eating and drinking more often instead.
Jesus defended the practice of his disciples by putting fasting in the perspective of genuine discipleship. Veering away from the frequent fasting of Biblical times, Jesus hinted at a kind that reflected the joy of Christianity. The fasting practiced by the Pharisees for the heck of it laid a heavy load upon the people. Jesus saw this as inconsistent with the joy every follower should radiate.
Fasting is still practiced by the modern world but not for lofty reasons. While people living in misery fast for lack of resources, the vane people among the rich willingly fast and bear the pangs of hunger because a good figure is the closest they can get to the elusive elixir of youth. But what a waste of a precious opportunity to grow in spiritual life!
The Church provides for mandatory fasting only on Ash Wednesdays and Good Fridays to discipline our senses and so attune ourselves to the spirit of the Lenten season. The emphasis is no longer on the frequency that characterized the fasting of Biblical times, or on the good body figure for which the modern world willingly fasts but on the preparation to embrace the joy of Easter. – Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM . Email: [email protected]. Website: www.frdan.org.
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