July 08, 2023/ Saturday of the 13th Week in Ordinary Time
Gospel: Matthew 9:14-18
Friends, in today’s Gospel Jesus answered the question of the John the Baptist’s disciple, “Why they and the disciples of the Pharisees fast while Jesus disciples do not fast?” He said to them, “Can the wedding guest mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days well come that the bridegroom is taken away from them and they will fast. He then added, “No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wine skins; if it is , the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed, but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved. In the Jewish tradition, fasting is very important. It is always esteemed with great virtue. We remember Moses, Elijah, Elisha, Samuel, Judith, Daniel, and even David when he committed sin of adultery, how he fasted, sorry for his sins, and was able to reconcile himself to the Lord. John the Baptist’s life was a life of fasting and discipline in preparation for the coming of the Lamb of God. And even Jesus himself, fasted and prayed for forty days before the paschal mystery. The disciples of John the baptist knew very well the importance of fasting, but when they asked Jesus, according to St. Jerome they asked with calumny uniting themselves with the Pharisees, whom they knew their master so much condemned. When Jesus answered them and said, “can the wedding guest mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? He doesn’t mean that His disciples will never fast, but as long as Jesus is not yet taken away from them, they should not fast for they ‘had not yet ascended to the higher degrees of perfection, they had not been renewed in Spirit, there they required to be treated with lenity; for had the higher and more sublime mysteries been delivered to them without previous preparation, they would never, not even in the natural course of things have been able to comprehend them’ [verbum] “I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now” (John 16). Thus, Jesus condescended to their weaknesses. “A piece of unshrunk cloth” – in Greek it signified a ‘new-woven cloth, that has not yet passed the hands of the fuller. And no one put a ‘piece of unshrunk cloth’ on an old garment! or Neither is a new wine into old wineskins. We need to understand that Jesus “justifies the manner of life which He himself taught His disciples, which at first was adapted to their understandings; lest, if in the beginning, He had required them to fast contrary to what they had been accustomed, they might have been frightened at the austerity of His institute and deserted Him.” [Verbum] According to Menochius, “Jesus compares, his disciples to an old garment, and to old bottles, and an austere mode of life to new clothes and new wine. And He argues, that if we do not put new cloth to an old garment, because it tears the garment the more, nor put new wine into old bottles, because by its fermentation it would easily break them, so in like manner His disciples, who had been accustomed to a less rigid mode of life, were not at once to be initiated into an austere discipline, lest they should sink under the difficulty, and relinquish the pursuit of a more perfect life.” And what does the Lord Jesus meant with this? Simply, the disciples have to wait till they will be renewed by the Holy Spirit, and from that time they could enter with advantage on the hard ways of penance. Friends, two things that I want to highlight here: the importance of fasting and the purification of intentions. We need to fast, as disciples of the Lord Jesus because in fasting we are disciplining ourselves particularly our fleshly desires. And of course, one way to fight against temptation of the Flesh, Power, and Fame is fasting. Our battle is not against our body but it is spiritual, yet bodily discipline would always help our spirit and increase our spirituality. Secondly, the purification of our intentions. In fasting, we need to have our intentions, but our intentions should be purified, not hypocritical or display only. Moreover, fasting should also lead us to reject jealousy, because if we still be jealous, our fasting and discipline would be useless. Prayer: Abba, our Loving Father, thank You for sending us Your Only Begotten Son to be our Master and Teacher. May we who believed in Him, discipline ourselves and purify always our intentions. Through our Lord Jesus Christ Your Son, who lives with You in unity of the Holy Spirit, One God forever and ever. Amen.
JOURNEY towards the Perfect Communicator 