Jesus answered them, “Can you make the wedding guests fast
while the bridegroom is with them?
We are called to let the priorities of the Kingdom give shape to our lives. Of all the goods of the world, Jesus is for us the greatest, the bridegroom, the one in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. It is he who holds all things together. It is he who sustains them by his word of power (see Hebrews 1:3). This being so, it is fitting that he should also inform the structure of our own lives.
For us, the primacy of Jesus means that secular celebrations can no longer be the occasions of our greatest joy, nor can secular tragedies be for us the worst things imaginable. Claiming to be Christians, we often make our greatest feasts things like the victories of professional sports teams. So too do we often make our greatest tragedies violence and loss of life in this world rather than than the loss of souls. Naturally, the good things of this world are indeed good. And the bad things of this world can indeed be quite horrible. But Jesus calls us to see all things in their proper perspective. There is nothing so good as the presence of the bridegroom, nothing so lamentable as his absence.
But the days will come, and when the bridegroom is taken away from them,
then they will fast in those days.
When Jesus was present it seemed to the scribes and Pharisees that the degree of festivity was irresponsible, that it neglected ritual duty. So too have Christians sometimes seemed to take fasting and penance to an unhealthy extreme when they believed that doing so would help bring the presence of the bridegroom into a situation. The world criticizes the Church both for too much celebration and too much asceticism. Yet it made perfect sense to Christians who had encountered the presence and the power of the bridegroom.
How dull, how lifeless, it must have been to try to structure one's life around mere ritual, merely imitation and anticipation of that which was to come. Such ritual could not respond dynamically to the human heart, nor to the unique demands of each circumstance.
Rather, new wine must be poured into fresh wineskins.
And no one who has been drinking old wine desires new,
for he says, ‘The old is good.
We have new rituals but they are not the same as the old ones. They are infused with life by the Holy Spirit. They allow us a real encounter with bridegroom and a genuine recourse when his presence to us seems distant. The old wineskins could not contain this new wine of joy poured out by the Spirit.
Let us ask the one who is the perfect image of the invisible God, the one in whose image we ourselves our made, the one who is our future hope, to help us to reorder our loves around those things which truly matter, with he himself as the head. This is not something that can happen without grace. Without grace, our passions will still more readily direct to hobbies, entertainment, and the pleasures of this world. Only if we ask his Spirit can we gradually come to learn to love the things of heaven more until this world becomes "strangely dim".
Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
his courts with praise;
Give thanks to him; bless his name.
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