Saturday in the 13th Week of Ordinary Time, July 6, 2024

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.”

It is interesting to see the interactions between Jesus and his Apostles and John the Baptist and his disciples.  Because for us Jesus outshines John so as to make him easily forgotten, we tend to under appreciate John’s influence on the Jews of the time.  Here, John’s disciples feel confident enough in their master’s superiority that they challenge Jesus’s way of life.  Because John’s arrest is told as a flashback later in St. Matthew’s Gospel, it is hard to see whether John was at this time still active in Judea.  At the time Matthew wrote his Gospel, probably in the late 30’s or early 40’s during the Jewish persecution of the Christians, John’s disciples were still very much in the picture, and Matthew included the episode in today’s Gospel Reading in order to show how the Lord had fulfilled John’s prophesy.

Now, Jesus was spoken of and spoke of himself as a Bridegroom in the New Testament.  This identification builds on and fulfills how God spoke of himself as the Bridegroom of Israel through the Prophets.  This in turn does not arise out of thin air, but is implicit in the covenants God made with his people throughout the Old Testament: “And I will take you to myself for my people, I will be your God: and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from the work-prison of the Egyptians” (Exodus 6, 7).  The Hebrew verb simply translated here as “I will take” also has the sense of “I will take in matrimony”.  Almighty God speaks through the Prophet Isaiah of this marriage he has contracted with Israel:“For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name; and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer.  For the Lord has called you like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, like a wife of youth when she is cast off, says your God. For a brief moment I forsook you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In overflowing wrath for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you, says the Lord, your Redeemer” (Isaiah 54, 5-8).  Through the Prophet Hosea we learn the reason for God’s dismissal of his Bride Israel: “Judge your mother, judge her: because she is not my wife, and I am not her husband. Let her put away her fornications from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts” (Hosea 2, 2).  Israel has turned to adultery with foreign gods.  The Lord does not forsake her entirely, however.  After allowing her to suffer some of the consequences of her actions, he seeks her out again: “Behold I will allure her, and will lead her into the wilderness: and I will speak to her heart” (Hosea 2, 14).  God speaks of Israel’s response: “And it shall be in that day, says the Lord: That she shall call me: My husband” (Hosea 2, 16).  The new covenant binding God and his people together is not made in the Old Testament.  The Prophets spoke of a time after Israel returned from exile, but there is no new covenant even during Israel’s brief independence from the Greeks.  

It is John the Baptist who announces the arrival of the Bridegroom to Israel: “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. This my joy therefore is fulfilled” (John 3, 29).  Jesus confirms that he is the heavenly Bridegroom on several occasions, notably in the Parable of the Marriage Feast: “The kingdom of heaven is likened to a king who made a marriage feast for his son” (Matthew 22, 2).  But it is at the Last Supper where the new marriage covenant is made: “And taking the chalice, he gave thanks and gave to them, saying: Drink ye all of this. For this is my Blood of the new covenant, which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins” (Matthew 26, 27-28).  By their drinking from this chalice, the Apostles act for the Bride, accepting the Lord Jesus as Bridegroom.  

We are members of the Bride married through this new covenant to the Son of God, yet he has not yet led his Bride into his house, to live with him there forever.  We now await his coming, certain that he will come at the time of his choosing.  The angels in heaven cry out to one another, “Let us be glad and rejoice and give glory to him. For the marriage of the Lamb is come: and his wife has prepared herself” (Revelation 19, 7).  When will the Bridegroom come?  He himself tells us, the Bride, “Behold, I come quickly!”   (Revelation 22, 7).  “And the Spirit and the Bride say: Come!” (Revelation 22, 17).  

As his Bride, let us await our Bridegroom with patience and make friends for him in our daily lives so that they may enjoy the marriage feast in heaven too.