Can the wedding guests mourn
as long as the bridegroom is with them?
In a way, David's relationship with Israel had been like a marriage, with the people declaring to him, "Behold, we are your bone and flesh" (see First Chronicles 11:1), just as Adam had said of Eve in Genesis (see Genesis 2:23). And if it was a Davidic image then Jesus using it was appropriate, as he was the messianic son of David. But it was a role which David only ever fulfilled partially. In the same way that he stood in for God who was himself the true king of Israel, so too did he stand in for him as bridegroom, which was another role that was belonged fully only to God himself.
For as a young man marries a young woman,
so shall your sons marry you,
and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
so shall your God rejoice over you (see Isaiah 62:5).
Jesus was the son of David, but somehow greater than David. That was why Jesus brought the attention of the Pharisees to an apparently incoherent element in Psalm 110, first quoting it, saying:
The Lord said to my Lord,
“Sit at my right hand,
until I put your enemies under your feet”’?
And then asking, "If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?" (see Matthew 22:44). Jesus was like David, not like a shadow cast by a greater original, but as the truth of which David was only an imperfect foreshadowing. However much David was a man after God's own heart (see First Samuel 13:14), only Jesus had a heart perfectly united to that of his Father. Jesus was therefore the bridegroom because he was in actuality the presence of God in the midst of Israel. If anything called for a feast, it was this.
The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them,
and then they will fast.
But then, if Jesus was bridegroom because of his divinity, how could it be said that he would be taken from them? Jesus himself was the one who promised to be with them always, to the end of the age (see Matthew 28:20), and who said that if two or three of them gathered in his name that he would be present in their midst (see Matthew 18:20). The possibility of him being taken doesn't seem to admit of a situation in which the Eucharist presence of Jesus is as abundantly available as it is to us.
The time to which Jesus referred was specifically his crucifixion and death, when he handed himself over freely, and let himself be taken. Just as he freely chose to lay down his life for his friends so too would his disciples enter into that experience by fasting, among other ways. It was part of the program by which they entered into the death of Jesus so as to share in the life of Jesus.
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his (see Romans 6:5).
Considered in this way we see the incommensurability of what he did for us and our response to him. Even a very rigorous fast of the sort that none of us are likely to undertake, that would strike even our Eastern brethren as difficult, would in no way approximate the sorrow and pain Jesus experienced for us. Yet the abundance and sufficiency of Jesus makes the inadequacy of our response to be sufficient. Our response to him could never earn the reward of eternal life. But by our response we signal at least our desire to be united to him, to the bridegroom who has made us, his bride, to be beautiful.
so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish (see Ephesians 5:27).
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