Friday, 22nd Week OT - Fr Alberic Maisog

1Cor. 4:1-5

Lk 5:33-39

-In answer to the accusation that His disciples were eating and drinking while the disciples of John and the Pharisees fasted frequently, Christ gives an answer that reaches far beyond the question of fasting itself: “Can you make the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? The day will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.”

-There is something marvelous in the way Christ proportioned the spiritual exercises of His disciples to their strength, their spiritual standing, and the circumstances in which He placed them. He did not impose the same discipline upon everyone at every moment, as though holiness consisted in the mere multiplication of outward observances. Rather, He knew what each soul required, and He insisted above all upon that which is the very soul of fasting: the mortification of sin, the crucifixion of the flesh, and the continual renunciation of self. These are worth infinitely more than any merely external penance, just as mercy is greater than sacrifice.

-For the purpose of fasting is not simply to make the body hungry, but to teach the soul what it ought to hunger for.

-This becomes clearer when we consider the dramatic difference between bodily pleasures and spiritual pleasures. Earthly pleasures awaken an intense desire in us when they are absent; yet once possessed and consumed, they very quickly lose their sweetness. The appetite clamors for them beforehand, but satisfaction often ends in satiety, and satiety in distaste. What we thought would satisfy us proves incapable of sustaining the desire that sought it.

-Spiritual pleasures work almost in the opposite manner. When we have never tasted them, they can seem insipid or even unintelligible to us. Divine things may appear distant, austere, or unattractive to the soul that has not yet learned their sweetness. But once a person has truly tasted something of God, desire is not extinguished by possession. It is awakened.

-The more the soul tastes, the more it hungers. The more it possesses, the more it longs to possess. And the more deeply it enters into divine things, the more clearly it discovers that there is always something further to seek. Spiritual enjoyment does not destroy desire; it purifies and enlarges it. The soul begins to understand that its deepest hunger cannot be satisfied by possessing created things, because it was made for something infinitely greater.

-Perhaps this is why Christ can speak of fasting and feasting without contradiction. The Christian life is not ultimately concerned with whether the body is eating or abstaining, but with what the heart desires. Fasting becomes holy when it teaches us to hunger for God; feasting becomes holy when it teaches us to receive His gifts without making them substitutes for Him. Both are ordered toward the same end: the purification of desire.

-The substantials of religion have therefore remained the same from the first revelation of mercy to fallen humanity. Repentance, faith, holiness, love of God, and self-denial are not passing customs or external peculiarities. They belong to the very substance of the spiritual life. Outward practices may differ according to time, circumstance, vocation, or the needs of a particular soul; but the work God desires to accomplish within the heart remains the same.

-And this is why Christ speaks also of new wine and fresh wineskins. The new wine of grace requires a new interior disposition capable of receiving it. A new spirit must be given to a new heart. As the Lord says through the prophet Ezekiel: “Get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit.”

-The same prayer rises from the lips of King David: “Create a pure heart in me, O God, and put a steadfast spirit within me. Indeed you love truth in the heart; then in the secret of my heart teach me wisdom.”

-The deepest fasting, then, is not merely the refusal of food, but the refusal of whatever keeps the heart from God. It is the gradual emptying of the soul of lesser loves so that it may become capable of receiving the greater Love. And perhaps this is the true reason Christ sometimes calls His disciples to feast and sometimes to fast: because both are meant to lead them, beyond the gifts of God, to God Himself.