Then the disciples of John approached him and said, "Why do we and the Pharisees fast (much), but your disciples do not fast?" Jesus answered them, "Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one patches an old cloak with a piece of unshrunken cloth, for its fullness pulls away from the cloak and the tear gets worse. People do not put new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the skins are ruined. Rather, they pour new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved."
The Word in other words
"Are you a KJ (kill joy)?" Jesus must have asked John's disciples. Fasting is done for varied reasons including health, discipline, atonement for sins, and even to "coerce" others. However, when one is in and with Jesus, the only meaningful act of fasting would that of fasting from work. When one is with Jesus, work is a feast where one has so much to do- for others and His Kingdom. Didn't He say "I have food no one knows about" (Jn 4:32)? Hence, eating is necessary to replenish the energy spent for others. Fasting (from work, that is, or simply RESTING) becomes inevitable for the sake of the next round of service in and out for the Lord! Didn't Jesus advise His disciples "to come away from work to a distant place to rest" (Mk 6:31)? Even machines have to be stopped to keep from overheating. This fasting from work thus has consequences to one's health. Without rest one suffers from burnout. Work will always be there, but rest and prayer are essential for us to be able to sustain our zeal for the work. But we know that the disciples of John did not fast like that.
Secondly, fasting comes easy when "the bridegroom" dies. That's what we call grieving, when one's energies go so slow that either one just wants to cry and the appetite seems to have left us too. Besides, when the reason for the fast is gone, as in death, the reason for all the celebration dissipates into thin air; one really needs to sit down and feel "the blow" of the loss. We may even feel like we have worked for nothing! Hence, our fasting on Good Friday.
And of course, we know why the Church maintains fasting on Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, one of the only two days in our church calendar in which we are required to fast. This one seems to be the only acceptable reason: atonement and conversion from our sins. Even Scriptures attest to this "powerful" coercive act of man which God looks so mercifully upon, remember the experience of the Ninevites in the book of Jonah? We can never force God, by fasting, to do things our way. Hence, when we fast so that we understand God's will for us, God is not coerced. In fact, we go by the ways of God!
- Fr. Bernardo R. Collera, SVD (DWC, Legazpi, Albay)
