Homily: Monday, 2nd week in Ordinary Time

I have embedded a video of this homily below. Preached on Monday, January 20, 2020, at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church in Wildwood, Florida, the homily's complete text (more or less) follows the video.

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Readings: 1 Sam 15:16-23; Ps 50; Mk 2:18-22

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In today’s Gospel passage Jesus used fasting as a way to remind us to order our relationships. He instructed the Pharisees and the disciples of John the Baptist that the time for fasting is in both the past and the future. Those questioning Jesus seemed to see fasting as an end in itself, rather than a means to develop a hunger for God’s Word and His Presence.

Moses understood this. In Deuteronomy he instructed the people:

“He humbled you and made you hungry; then He fed you on manna that neither you nor your fathers had known before, to teach you that man cannot live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” [Dt 8:3].

The words of Jesus and Moses and echoed as well by Samuel in our first reading when he instructs Saul that obedience to God’s will is more important than any ritual:

“Truly, obedience is better than sacrifice… presumption a crime of idolatry.” [1 Sam 15:22,23]

For so many today obedience is far from easy, for it demands humility, doesn’t it? It asks us to accept that God, and not you and I, knows what’s best for us. How often, like Saul, do we presume to know God’s will, when in truth we are merely substituting our own desires, our own will? Perhaps this is the worst form of idolatry: instead of striving to be like God – How did Jesus put it? “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect” [Mt 5:48] – we instead try to create a god in our own image.

Remember God’s words from our responsorial psalm?

“When you do these things should I be silent? Do you think that I am like you?” [Ps 50:21]

It’s as if we are determined to misunderstand God. Just as Jesus’ disciples often misunderstood Him, it seems John’s disciples also failed to understand all that John taught them through word and deed. It would seem they really hadn’t comprehended that John fasted to persevere before the Messiah’s coming, to watch for His Presence. This, indeed, is the Presence Jesus speaks of.

Because He is present, it’s a time to celebrate His Coming, a time of joy. For the disciples, fasting will come with the Passion; for us it’s the fasting of Lent and Good Friday. But do you and I fast simply because the Church tells us to fast? Or, like Jesus in the desert, do we fast to ready ourselves, to ask for the strength we will need to answer Jesus’ call to discipleship?

Of course, our Lenten fast is followed again by the joy of Easter. Indeed, to emphasize this, the Eastern Church encourages the faithful not to fast and kneel throughout the Easter season. The time of repentance has passed.

Jesus goes on to remind the disciples that His Presence is something supremely new. He uses brief parables to make His point. He describes the joy of wedding guests in the presence of the bridegroom; then continues with examples from the people’s domestic lives: 

A patch of new, strong cloth will tear an old piece of clothing if it undergoes any stress.

And new wine, still fermenting, will expand and break an old wineskin. 

Jesus uses these common examples, asking those who hear Him to apply them as well to their spiritual lives.

To accept Jesus’ Presence, then, demands a new receptivity, a new way of thinking, the kind we hear proclaimed in the Sermon on the Mount. God’s love for us is like new wine that always demands new wineskins. In other words, we must continue to renew our relationship with Him, always ready to receive God’s call to enter more deeply into the new life that God wills for us.

Our prayer life, too, must be a continual process of renewal – renewing our relationship with Jesus, recognizing all that our loving God wants for us. 

We live in a time of expectation, brothers and sisters, a time of renewal, a time to strive for holiness, a time to turn from all that prevents us from deepening our relationship with Jesus Christ.