First reading: Hosea 2:16-17,21-22
Psalm: Ps 103:1-4,8,10,12-13
Epistle: 2 Corinthians 3:1-6
Gospel: Mark 2:18-22

—No one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the skins are ruined. Rather, new wine is poured into fresh wineskins.—

The purpose of the old fast

Today’s Gospel begins with a statement about the fasting of John’s disciples and the Pharisees. A group walks up to Jesus and says: “Why do the disciples of John and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?”

Isn’t that annoying? It isn’t that the question itself is annoying, it is that the question is being asked both as a trap and a comparative.

We get into trouble when we compare, when we contrast two things without knowing much about either.

Certainly, the disciples of John and the Pharisees fasted, and they took it very seriously. What we’re missing is the basis of their fast. Why did they fast? Why didn’t Jesus’ disciples fast? Should we fast?

Many of us only know fasting within the context of the Church, or perhaps we recollect people from other religions who fast, or fasting for political purposes — the hunger strike. But why did John’s disciples and the Pharisees fast?

Both the Pharisees and John’s disciples fasted as part of their expectation. In reality they were a people without. They knew of the promised Messiah, but they stood without. All they had were expectation and deep, deep longing. The expectation and the longing led them to fast — to fast in the hope that their personal sacrifice, their mortification, might bring about the Messiah’s arrival. Perhaps, John’s disciples knew that the Messiah was near, that His time was drawing close. In John 3:22-30 John the Baptist had already pointed to Jesus, who was baptizing in Judea, as the bridegroom.

The old fast, referenced by this group that approached Jesus, was the fast of longing and desire. It was the fast held by a people still waiting, still expecting, but without the Messiah.

Jesus’ disciples have cause for joy

Jesus’ disciples weren’t fasting. In fact they were breaking a lot of rules. They were working – picking grain on the Sabbath, they weren’t fasting at the appointed times, they were doing all sorts of crazy things, like curing the sick and driving out demons, raising the dead, proclaiming —Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.— They saw the signs and heard the words. Over the past few weeks the Gospels tell us that they heard the bystanders marvel: “We have never seen anything like this.” Jesus’ disciples had cause to party, to literally, rejoice. For them, there was no purpose to fasting. The sick, the leper, and the unclean were healed and were welcome, the possessed were freed, tax collectors and sinners followed Jesus and ate with Him, He spoke to the Samartian and the Gentile. Their Jesus was the loving welcome and open invitation to repentant sinners. He was the victor over all enemies, most particularly over sin. He was the expectation fulfilled. The Messiah was with them.

Jesus is the bridegroom, the Church is His bride

As I mentioned, John the Baptist made it very clear:

He who has the bride is the bridegroom; the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice; therefore this joy of mine is now full.

Given 2,000 years of history we well know that the bridegroom has come. We have a lot of perspective. Yet it is key that we understand, as we are about to walk into our Lenten journey, that the bridegroom has come, that we are standing in the midst of the nuptial celebration. Our joy, like John’s, must be full. Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior has taken us into His outstretched arms. He calls us to the celebration. The old fast is dead. It no longer has meaning or purpose. The longing is over.

We hold, in our hands, in our hearts, in our homes, in our parish, in our Holy Polish National Catholic Church, the true joy that comes from knowing that our fulfillment has arrived. Yet we are called to the fast.

The wine and wineskin

Jesus’ description of new wine in old wineskins will help us in understanding the new fast.

The people Jesus was talking to used animal skin containers for carrying wine. The animal’s skin was removed, it was sewn up with the fur side out, and an opening was left in the skin to form a spout. Because these skins were used quickly they weren’t tanned. New wine could be put into new wineskins because they were soft and pliable. As the wine fermented the new wineskins could take the pressure, stretching and expanding to suit the wine. Over time, the skins would become hard and brittle. If you put new wine into the old skin the fermentation process would cause the old skin to burst, ruining both the skin and the wine.

What is the new wine

Jesus comes to us as the new wine. The Pharisees, all those who stood waiting, were set in their ways. They were so accustomed to fasting, to their despair over the long wait for the Messiah, that they no longer hoped. The hope was replaced by the process of fasting for the sake of fasting. Jesus called them on this many times, telling them that they fasted so that they would be seen as fasting, fasting for the people’s approval, not God’s. They were the old skins. As Jesus tried to pour His teaching into their hearts their old and brittle hearts burst. Their hearts did not burst in joy, but in anger and pain. Don’t mess with our fast, can’t you see how right we are? They fasted in expectation, but when the fulfillment of the expectation came, they missed it.

Jesus’ disciples, they saw and heard. They were celebrating. They were bursting with joy, because their new, regenerated hearts, could hold Jesus – the new wine, the finest wine, like the wine at Canna, was in their midst. Jesus’ disciples were the new wine skins, open to accepting the reality of the Messiah.

What is the new wine skin

Like the disciples, we are new wine skins. Our Christian life is filled with the joy that comes from Jesus’ call, and our acceptance of His reality.

But deacon, I feel old and brittle. I don’t like new wine in my old body. I am comfortable, even with my familiar sins. I love Jesus of course, but I really don’t need a lot of this filling up. If it happens I just might burst. You know, it was ok for the disciples. They were there, they saw and heard, they could be pliable. I can’t.

So we embark, all of us, with our comfortable hearts and our dried out skins, and our jars of Nivea and Eucerine, and hey Magge, is that Palmolive… We embark on this Lenten journey.

What is the new fast

God asked Hosea to tell us:

I will lead her into the desert and speak to her heart.
She shall respond there as in the days of her youth, when she came up from the land of Egypt.

Our hearts may feel old and dry. We may very well be the most complacent people on the planet. I may be the laziest deacon in the history of the Church, but we are called into the Lenten desert. In this Lenten desert we are to take up the new fast. We are to fast, to put things out of our lives, and to develop the discipline we need to be good Christians. Through this process we will regain the flexibility, the openness we need, to accept the reality of Jesus.

If we acknowledge that we are complacent and comfortable, if we get that far, it is still a long road to making the changes that are necessary. Those changes aren’t something done through our will. Who can say: ‘Today I am lazy, but tomorrow I will be new, active and alive? It doesn’t work that way. That’s not the way we are built.

The new fast, the fast that comes from our joy, provides the mechanism we need to step out of who we are, in baby steps. If we cannot give up meat on Wednesdays and Fridays in Lent, how will be give up even one sin. If we cannot say no to small sins, to small acts of selfishness, how will we conquer the big ones? If our self discipline is lacking, let us set, with God’s grace, to discipline and mortify ourselves.

The Protestant preacher John Piper says it this way:

Never, NEVER does God ask you to deny yourself a greater value for a lesser value. That’s what sin is. On the contrary, always, ALWAYS, God calls us to surrender second-rate, fleeting, unsatisfying pleasures in order to obtain first-rate, eternal, satisfying pleasures.

Through this new fast we are transformed. We give up on things of lesser value, second-rate, fleeting, unsatisfying pleasures for something of far greater value, eternal life in Jesus Christ. We become what Paul says of us:

You are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by all,
shown to be a letter of Christ administered by us, written not in ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets that are hearts of flesh.

Through the new fast, through this Lent, our hearts will be transformed. Our old wineskins become new. When our hearts are filled with the wine that is the Word of God, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and the presence of Christ, they do not burst in anger or resentment. Rather, they hold it all and beam with the light, the joy, the happiness that is Jesus Christ.

Let us pray:

Lord Jesus Christ, You call us to the discipline of the Lenten fast, to achieve, with Your help, the strength to overcome sin. Grant us, in Your great compassion and mercy, a fruitful fast. May our fast renew our hearts, bringing them to life, making them able to hold the fulness of Your joy-filled Word, and causing them to show forth the light of Your truth — new hearts to hold Your kingdom’s new wine. Amen.