GOSPEL REFLECTION, MONDAY, 2ND WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME, 20 JANUARY 2025

Mark 2:18-22.  The people of Israel were required to fast only one day a year, on the Day of Atonement.  The Pharisees, as a pious practice fasted much more, for two days a week.  Their probing question to Jesus as to why he feasted with sinners rather than fasting compares him to themselves implicitly, and outwardly to John the Baptist’s disciples.  If the Pharisees  fasted so that their piety was to be seen, Jesus in the gospel condemned them Matthew 6:16-18).  In the Pharisees’ estimation, Jesus had two counts against him: that he did not fast as they did; and that he consorted with sinners and outcasts and actually feasted with them.  Conflict with the Pharisees continued until Jesus’ last days, often over practices of piety such as their questions about fasting and other observances of the Law. 

The really significant incident in today’s gospel was a revelation about Jesus’ identity soon after he began his ministry.  He was the ‘bridegroom’ who could not fast while he was with his guests.  This highlights the characteristic of Jesus’ followers, their festival joy.   In Jewish practice of the time, wedding feasts went on for a few days.  But now Jesus had just revealed that he was Messiah in a covenant relationship with his people – he was wedded, married to them.  The ‘wedding feast’ was a powerful image of the Heavenly Banquet to be shared with his faithful in the end of time.   We share in it as a foretaste every time that we receive Holy Communion at Mass.   Likely few if any, let alone the Pharisees, understood what Jesus had just said, but it was another revelation of Jesus’ identity that his people would come to recognise only later, after the Paschal Mystery.  But there is a foreboding revelation here too: Jesus said that one day the ‘bridegroom’ would be taken away – then his people left behind will fast.  That fasting is a work of penance.  We are strongly reminded that fasting is one of the ‘three works of holiness’ along with prayer and works of charity, all to be done quietly and without outward show (see Matthew 6:16=18).  They are works of ‘inner holiness,’ holiness in the heart,’ holiness at the depths of who we are, not external showy acts of piety.