Saturday in the Thirteenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 2, 2022

Matthew 9, 14-17

The disciples of John approached Jesus and said, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast much, but your disciples do not fast?” Jesus answered them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one patches an old cloak with a piece of unshrunken cloth, for its fullness pulls away from the cloak and the tear gets worse. People do not put new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the skins are ruined. Rather, they pour new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”

Fasting is a practice the origins of which are lost in time.  The Israelites practiced it long ago and prescriptions for it appear in the Mosaic Law, but their neighbors fasted as well.  It is possible that the fasting that accompanies mourning transferred over to religious behavior.  The fasting of the Pharisees and of John the Baptist’s disciples may have had to do with purification of the body as a way or as a sign of the purification of the soul.  John the Baptist and his disciples would have fasted primarily as penance and in preparation for the coming of the Messiah, whichJohn understood in terms of a wedding feast, before which one should fast.  This is indicated by such statements as, “He that has the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices with joy because of the bridegroom’s voice.” (John 3, 29).  The Lord Jesus uses the same language to explain why his disciples do not fast: “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?”  Thus, the disciples of John the Baptist should cease fasting: it is time to feast.  We note that the disciples of John ask the question but they do not include John in it, saying that he fasts as well.  This may be because at this point Herod had imprisoned or killed John and his disciples kept on in his memory, following his teachings as best they could without him.  St. Matthew does not describe his arrest and death until chapter 14, but St. Luke, so interested in correct chronology, places this shortly after the Lord Jesus begins his ministry.  The Lord does not tell them that he is abolishing fasting, but the proper time for fasting will come later, after the bridegroom — himself — is taken away from them in his Passion and Death.  This fasting will prepare us for the great wedding feast in heaven.

“No one patches an old cloak with a piece of unshrunken cloth, for its fullness pulls away from the cloak and the tear gets worse.”  This saying and the one immediately following it about the wineskins may seem unconnected to the question of fasting, but the Fathers knew otherwise.  St. John Chrysostom declared that the old “cloak” and the old “wineskins” were the Apostles who were not yet strong enough to carry out in full the life of faith he was teaching them.  The “patch” of new cloth is grace, but it would not adhere, as it were, to them in their current state.  Instead, they must must be renewed by grace so that they could carry out all the commandments of the Lord, of which fasting was a part.  Similarly, the new “wine” is the life of faith and the skins to hold it must be new as well, lives transformed by grace.  “Both are preserved.”  Through the grace of God we can preserve ourselves from sin, not letting the Christian life “leak” out of us until we are empty skins, but fulfilling God’s purpose for us.