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Readings: Gen 27:1-5, 15-29; Ps 135; Mt 9:14-17
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Years ago back in the 60s, I took a course on the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament. Our professor was a Jesuit who had spent years in a Chinese Communist prison.
In one class, as we discussed Isaac and Rebekah, this wonderful priest said, "Poor Rebekah. She was so very unbalanced." It took some time - maybe 10 or 20 years - for me to understand exactly what he meant.
You see, it was Rebekah's sense of love, her human love, that caused her life to lack balance, to be, in a sense, disordered. Rebekah loved her son, Jacob, more than anyone or anything else, even more than she loved her husband, Isaac. She had taken her motherhood and lifted it far above her marriage. And because of this unbalanced, disordered view, she led her son, Jacob, into a confusing web of deceits and outright lies.
That Esau seemed to care little for his birthright really doesn't mitigate the sin. And the result was not good for Jacob. Yes, he received his father's blessing, but his lies brought him much grief in the years that followed. As he later became a victim of the same sins committed by others, he learned of and lived with the often tragic consequences of deceit.
Sin is nothing less than disorder, a lack of balance and order in our souls. And so it always has consequences. Sin also points to disorder in our relationships. I suppose the key question for all of us is: How have we ordered our relationships?
Do we always place our relationship with God first and foremost? That doesn't mean that we ignore others. Not at all. It simply means that God must always come first. And when we do that, when we place God first, it inevitably leads to an improvement in our relationships with others.
I've often told married couples that the primary task of each is to help the other get to heaven. And when couples take that attitude, their marriage and their relationships improve. Rebekah failed to understand that it is through her marriage, this sacred bond with Isaac, that God's will is manifested in their lives. And Jacob, by going along with his mother's plan of deceit, damaged three of the key relationships in his life: that with his father, his mother, and his brother.
I sometimes think we forget that God is omniscient, that He knows everything. He can take our sinfulness and the chaos it brings into our lives, and turn it to good. Yes, God can certainly write straight with the crooked lines we give him.
And so Jacob, who stole his brother's birthright, can become a patriarch, one of the foundation stones of our faith and that of our Jewish brothers and sisters. Indeed, as Jesus once reminded the Sadducees, our God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob [Mt 22:32].
Of course, God's ability, His willingness, to bring good into our lives, despite our sinfulness, doesn't mean we go around sinning, all the while exclaiming, "Well, God will take care of it." He might well take care of it, but in the meantime there will be serious consequences.
In our Gospel passage today Jesus uses fasting as a way to remind us to order our relationships. He tells the disciples of John the Baptist that the time for fasting is both in the past and future.
John's disciples 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 instructs 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].This is why John the Baptist fasted: to persevere before the Messiah's coming, to watch for His Presence. It is this Presence that Jesus speaks of. Because He is present, it's a time to celebrate His Coming, a time of joy, not a time of fasting. That will come with the Passion, and the fasting of Lent and Good Friday, followed again by the joy of Easter. Indeed, to emphasize this the Eastern Church forbids fasting and kneeling 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 tells of the joy of wedding guests in the presence of the bridegroom, the patching of old garments, of new wine poured into wineskins. His Presence demands a new receptivity, a new way of thinking, the kind we hear proclaimed in the Sermon on the Mount.
We live in a time of expectation, 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.
