5 July 2025 – Saturday of the 13th week in Ordinary Time
Genesis 27:1-5, 15-29; Matthew 9:14-17
H o m i l y
The first chapters of Matthew's Gospel describe the beginnings of Jesus' missionary activity. Very early on, the young rabbi and his disciples began to astonish everyone. Of course, people began to realize that Jesus had come to bring something new. His miracles, his teaching, the power he claimed to have to forgive sins, all this caused a great stir throughout Galilee. Everyone wanted to see and hear him.
At the same time, the behavior of Jesus and his disciples was intriguing. It was not the behavior one would expect from men of God, from ‘perfect’ men. Not only did Jesus choose a tax collector from among his disciples (cf. yesterday's Gospel), but he even invited him to his home with his tax collector friends. He also readily associated with sinners. His disciples eat without performing the ritual washing of their hands and do not observe fasts as the disciples of John the Baptist did. It is always disturbing to see people who present themselves as witnesses of God and who behave differently from what is expected of such witnesses.
So Jesus was asked, ‘Why don't your disciples fast, like John's disciples and the Pharisees?’ To understand Jesus' answer, we must remember that fasting in the Old Testament was linked to the expectation of the Messiah. It expressed dissatisfaction with the present time and an impatient expectation of the coming of the Savior. The meaning of Jesus' answer is very clear: the Messiah has arrived. This type of fasting no longer makes sense. It is time for festive clothing, it is time for new wine.
The temptation for the disciple is to want to accept the challenge of the new while retaining the security of the past. Such an attitude, says Jesus, is like trying to sew a new piece onto an old garment, or putting new wine into old wineskins. This exposes us to contradictions and inner turmoil. Jesus invites his disciples to take a stand and flee from such compromises.
Saint Paul had to face this problem. He experienced a moment of choice in his life that was a break with his past. This choice and this break were necessary to definitively avoid the inner turmoil that would have been created by a compromise between the demands of the old Law and the Law of Love of Christ.
Do we not encounter the same problem? We want to be faithful to God, but we do not want to give up all our idols. We want to practice justice, but we want to succeed in business. We want to be good monks and nuns whose lives are centered on the pursuit of prayer in solitude, but it is difficult to give up the joy of socializing and entertainment.
When, instead of choosing, we allow ourselves to be torn apart internally like the fabric onto which a new piece of fabric has been sewn, it is because we are forgetting part of this morning's Gospel—the part where Jesus says, ‘The bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast.’ We are living in this period of history. Fasting now has the meaning of showing fidelity and constancy in love, even when we are no longer filled with the presence of the bridegroom. Fasting is the joyful celebration of the presence of an absence, not the nostalgia for the absence of a presence.