Saturday in the Thirteenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 8, 2023

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.”

“The disciples of John approached Jesus.”  Jesus began his public ministry  after John the Baptist was arrested, according to Mark 1, 14-15.  If this is true, then the disciples of John, who remained together and continued his work, came to Jesus while John was lying in prison.  They came to him not at John’s request, as they did later, but on their own.  Their question seems genuine and their motive was curiosity.  They knew that John had pointed out Jesus as the Lamb of God and that some of John’s followers had joined with Jesus.  “Why do we and the Pharisees fast much, but your disciples do not fast?”  John’s disciples do not say why they and the Pharisees fast “much”.  The way the Lord answers the question, they fast in order to prepare for the coming of the Messiah or, as a component of their prayer that God send the Messiah.  The Lord’s answer, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?”, gently urges them to consider whether the Messiah has in fact come, and that it is he.  He does not make the claim to be the Messiah, the Bridegroom, but rather sets before them what is necessary for them to figure this out for themselves. Jesus refers to himself as “the Bridegroom”, as John had already spoken of him to them: “He who  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. This my joy therefore is fulfilled” (John 3, 29).  We should notice that John and Jesus carefully avoid using the loaded term “messiah”.

“The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.”  That is, the present time is the time for feasting but a time will come when it is fitting to fast.  The bridegroom will be “taken away from them”, that is, he will die.  We, his”friends”, fast between the time of the Lord’s Death and his second coming.  This fasting is a means of preparation through penance as well as part of our prayer for God’s Kingdom to come.

“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 seems separate from the verses that precede it.  The Lord uses a bit of common knowledge in order to make a point about grace.  The old cloak is a person not reborn in baptism, a person without faith.  The “unshrunken cloth” is grace.  Grace cannot help a person to understand a mystery of the Lord or to perform a virtuous act who is not baptized and have faith.  There is no capacity to receive grace.  Such a person is like someone without hands trying to catch a ball thrown to him.  “For its fullness pulls away from the cloak and the tear gets worse.”  The person who strives to understand a mystery of the Lord without grace or perform a virtuous work without it will find on frustration and misunderstanding.

“They pour new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”  One who is baptized is a “new skin” capable of holding the new wine of grace and is capable of understanding and believing in the mysteries of our Faith, which the Lord has taught us.  An enormous difference exists between a person who is baptized and one who is not.  He can know and do that which is beyond the ability of the unbaptized.  He can know and please the Lord Jesus Christ.