The scribes and Pharisees said to Jesus,
“The disciples of John the Baptist fast often and offer prayers,
and the disciples of the Pharisees do the same;
but yours eat and drink.”
The Pharisees wanted to know why Jesus didn't do the same thing as everyone else, why he eschewed the conventional practices and prayers. We ourselves see similar accusations leveled against anyone who ignores the pressure to blend in and appear as one of the crowd. Both the Pharisees and the disciples of John, a fairly wide sample of the population, did a certain thing. How then could Jesus ignore it? There was a sense of peer pressure, of trying to hammer down the nail that was sticking up. Don't we know this pressure to conform in our own world, and even in the Church? It is not of itself a good criteria for discernment that a wide swath of the population does a certain thing. Even well meaning and devote Catholics sometimes try to impose a specific spiritual style or devotion on others. They will tell us that all of them are so taken with some legitimate and noble devotion, even, say, the consecration to Mary, or the brown scapular, and imply that one can't be a good Catholic without it. One thing we learn from the ministry of Jesus is to be skeptical of the so-called wisdom of the crowds. The things in themselves may be good, whether fasting, prayer, or other devotions and practices. But that does not mean that we are called to them in a given time and place.
Jesus answered them, “Can you make the wedding guests fast
while the bridegroom is with them?
We are called to be attentive enough to the presence of the bridegroom that our fasting is about more than mere routine. It ought to be motivated by our relationship with the bridegroom himself. Otherwise our best intentions can become obstacles to what is meant to be a wedding feast. Or we may insist on feasting even in the sad absence of the bridegroom and find ourselves unable to derive the joy such celebrations are intended to impart. If Jesus himself is not at the center of our discernment we will find ourselves tearing from the new cloak of Christianity to patch our old and earthly way of thinking. We will find ourselves pouring new wine into vessels that are not suited to the wine. If we keep pouring in spite of ourselves, just because it seems like what everyone is doing, the skins may well burst.
Jesus himself is now meant to be the criteria for action or inaction, fasting or feasting. He himself provides us with an entirely new cloak. We can leave the old behind, unpatched. He himself gives us the new wine of the Holy Spirit and himself makes us fresh wineskins that are adaptable and flexible enough to receive it. This single principle of discernment is exactly what Paul understood and described in today's first reading.
It does not concern me in the least
that I be judged by you or any human tribunal;
I do not even pass judgment on myself;
I am not conscious of anything against me,
but I do not thereby stand acquitted;
the one who judges me is the Lord.
We must yet fast when the bridegroom is taken away. It is not that it is all feasting from here on out. But it is precisely his proximity that is now our principle, drawing him when he is distant, celebrating him when he is near. Even liturgical fasting and feasting are designed to help us individually engage in precisely this. When we learn to enter into these practices because of the bridegroom, and not so we can look like everyone else, it is then that we are transformed by them. This should help us when we are tempted to judge others for not doing that which we take for granted that they ought to do.
Therefore, do not make any judgment before the appointed time,
until the Lord comes,
for he will bring to light what is hidden in darkness
and will manifest the motives of our hearts,
and then everyone will receive praise from God.
When God alone is our judge, and when we leave judging our neighbors to him, it is then that we experience immense freedom. Only then will our spiritual lives achieve escape velocity from mere routine and become truly vital and alive.
Commit to the LORD your way;
trust in him, and he will act.
He will make justice dawn for you like the light;
bright as the noonday shall be your vindication.
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