WITHOUT THE BRIDEGROOM, ONLY WITH A HANGOVER

Friday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time

Lk 5:33-39

Our Gospel today is about fasting. The scribes and the Pharisees approached Jesus and said, “The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and the disciples of the Pharisees do he same; but Yours eat and drink.” Jesus answered them, “Can you make the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come, and when the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they will fast in those days.” Jesus is the bridegroom and we are the wedding guests. We fast when the Jesus is taken away from us.

But when is Jesus taken away from us?

Jesus is taken away from us when we choose to stay away from Him. Sin alienates us from Jesus. When we sin, we should fast. The more grievous the sin, the greater fasting we should do. But we fast not to please a capricious, sadistic, and masochistic god. God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is not capricious, sadistic, and masochistic. He is our loving Father. Fasting is not bribing God to forgive us from our sins. Forgiveness is His ever ready and ever gratuitous gift to us.

But why then should we really fast when we sin?

There are three reasons why we should fast when we sin.

Fasting is a form of discipline. It tames our basic instincts. It teaches us the value of denying our selves which in turn strengthens our will for the greater good and forms our character. Fasting shows us that we are not only what we receive but what we also give.

It is not enough that we repent from sins we commit. If we are truly contrite, we should learn and grow in holiness and grace. No one grows in holiness and grace without fasting. If our fasting does not help us become better persons, more holy, and filled with grace, our fasting is none sense.

Fasting is a form of penance. It is a sign of our desire to set aright what has been rendered wrong by our sins, to rise from our weaknesses, and to be freed from that which enslaves us. It shakes us from our complacency to the ways of the world and deeply disturbs us from our selfishness. It wakes us up from our dream of being the center of everything and everyone. Fasting gives us a sense of the evil of sin and an awareness of what sin redounds to.

When we sin, we hurt God and His People. No matter how private our sins are, they affect everyone and everything in the world. Fasting is an expression of our sorrow because we hurt God and others by our sins. Because we see our sins for what they really are – which is essentially self-centeredness – we fast so as to dislodge our selves from the center of everything and everyone for Jesus. The Seven Capital Sins – gluttony, anger, sloth, envy, greed, lust, and avarice – are manifestations of self-centeredness. Fasting inverts this situation of sin.

Fasting is a form of sacrifice. It is an offering of the self. When we fast, we should not forget to fast in union with the suffering Jesus. Jesus suffered a lot on account of our sins. As Scripture says, “He who does not sin was made sin for us so that He may redeem us and reconcile us with God.” Jesus sacrificed Himself for us. He sacrificed His own life. Realizing that we are sinners, we unite our selves with Jesus – the Sacrificial Lamb for our sins – and through our fasting we sacrifice with Him. Patterned according to His manner of self-oblation, the offering we bring to God is our very selves in communion with Jesus, nothing less and nothing else.

Fasting is a discipline, a penance, and a self-oblation in union with Jesus because on account of our sins Jesus is taken away from us. The wedding guests fast when the bridegroom is taken away from them. It is unfortunate though that in some wedding feasts the guests remain even while the bridegroom is no longer with them and they continue their merry making until they fall down drunk. A wedding feast can be intoxicating too. There are people who do not realize this. And they wake up the following day without the bridegroom, only with a hangover