July 04, 2015
Saturday, 13th Week in Ordinary Time
1st Reading: Gen 27:1-5, 9-10,15-29
Gospel: Mt 9:14-17
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? Time will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, 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. Besides you don’t put new wine in old wineskins. If you do, the wineskins will burst and the wine be spilt. No, you put new wine in fresh skins; then both are preserved.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
Fasting done for a show is a poor show because the public is hardly entertained by people trumpeting themselves. It puzzled Jesus what sustained the Pharisees in this practice. Fasting had at least three noble purposes in the Old Testament. It was done as a token of sorrow (see 1 Samuel 31:13; 2 Samuel 1:12; 3:35), as a sign of repentance (see 1 Samuel 7:6), and as aid of prayer in time of need and crisis (see 2 Samuel 12:16ff). The Israelite cultic law did not require any fast except on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:29ff; 23:17ff; Numbers 29:7). But in Pharisaic Judaism, fasting evolved into a highly esteemed pietistic exercise.
Even the idea of fasting of John’s followers was already tainted. When they questioned Jesus’ disciples why they fasted rarely, they had in mind fasting as a dramatization of sorrow. This kind of fasting is not appropriate in times of rejoicing. The all-year-round fasting of a Christian is not one that dramatizes sorrow for sorrow’s sake, but one that enhances prayer and repentance. This was the kind of fasting Jesus underwent for 40 days.
Today’s Gospel reorients us to the true objectives of fasting. The Catechism for Filipino Catholics (art. 1686 and 1687) lists fasting among the “other means of conversion” along with almsgiving and prayer. But it emphasizes loving service as “especially helpful”, one that “covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8).
There are more noble reasons to fast than to put up a show. We can fast to overcome the power of evil (Mark 9:29), and to handle major decisions as did the Apostles when they elected Barnabas and Paul at Antioch (Acts 13:2) and when they appointed the elders of the newly established churches of Asia (Acts 14:23). The most noble of them all is fasting to overcome the power of evil, including the evil of fasting for a show!—Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email: dan.delosangeles@gmail.com. Website: www.frdan.org.
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