Friday after Ash Wednesday, February 16, 2024

Matthew 9, 14-15

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.”

The practice of fasting for moral or religious reasons originates early in human history.  We find historical evidence for it throughout the ancient world, such as among the Hindus as well as in the Ancient Near East.  Fasting became a regular part of Jewish life over time, and was understood to have been commanded by God in Leviticus 23, 27, when he designates a day of atonement for the Jews, though the practice itself is not specifically commanded.  Religious leaders and even kings could decree fasts for specific occasions or purposes, such as reported in 2 Chronicles 20, 3 -4: “Jehoshaphat feared, and set himself to seek the Lord, and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. And Judah assembled to seek help from the Lord; from all the cities of Judah they came to seek the Lord.”  Jehoshaphat was responding to a serious military threat.  Thus, fasting has the purpose of supplication in addition to its more obvious purposes in mourning and repentance.

We see in today’s Gospel Reading that various religious movements within the Jewish religion practiced fasting: the Pharisees and the disciples of John the Baptist.  We also know from the historian Josephus that that members of the Essence sect fasted.  The words of the Lord Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, “When you fast, anoint your head and wash your face” (Matthew 6, 17), when compared with what he says in today’s Gospel Reading, seems to indicate that he meant those who believed in him would fast after his Death and Resurrection, in the time before his return to judge the living and the dead.

The question the disciples ask: “Why do we and the Pharisees fast much, but your disciples do not fast?” is as much about their identity as the Lord’s followers — and, indirectly, about that of the Lord — as about the religious  significance of fasting.  This becomes more clear when we recall that the disciples also asked Jesus to teach them to pray as John had taught his disciples to pray (cf. Luke 11, 1).  They wanted signs of distinction between themselves as followers of Jesus and the others.  They wanted to know how they were different from the others.  Was Jesus a follower of the Pharisees or of John the Baptist?  Or was he leading them on a different way than them?  Jesus answers both concerns: “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.”  He identifies himself as the Bridegroom, whose coming John had so often preached, and his own followers as “the friends of the Bridegroom”, making an enormous distinction between them and the disciples of the Pharisees, and at the same time heartening back to the words of the Lord’s Forerunner.  They were friends of that Bridegroom of Isaiah 54, 5: “For your husband is your Maker, whose name is the Lord of hosts; and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, who is called the God of all the earth.”  And as long as this Bridegroom was with them, they could not fast but were to rejoice in his company.  But he would be “taken away” they would fast.  To this point in St. Matthew’s Gospel the Lord has not taught that he will be arrested and put to death, and so this being “taken away” would not have been clear.  Certainly the Messiah had come to restore Israel and so he would not be departing.  But this does indicate the primary religious purpose of fasting: penance.  And for us, we can see that penitential practices such as fasting will enable us to follow the Lord to the place to which he has departed.