Sometimes in life we have the tendency to check what others are doing. We tend to enter into an investigating mode, snooping on our neighbors. This seems to be what happened in today’s gospel reading.
The disciples of John observed Jesus’s followers and had to asked Jesus why they, together with the Pharisees fast while His disciples do not.
Jesus took the opportunity to teach, saying that they had missed the point in fasting.
Jesus teaches “fast without show-off”, that is, not showing everybody that you are fasting, not wearing sack clothes or being gloomy to people to show that you are really suffering.
Such a way of life is the old wineskins, or old ways of doing things, that needed to be reviewed.
The new way, Jesus says is the time for the new wineskins. This is a time for Jesus’s message of salvation and the good news of the kingdom of God. We the people need to accept the new ways of Jesus and his teaching.
Fasting for “show off” blinds people. Praying to be see, is not a virtue.
The new way, Jesus’ message calls for total transformation, that is, completely becoming new wineskins.
If we follow the footsteps of Jesus, we become new wineskins.
We rely in the word of God. We pray and fast to “our Father who sees in secret.”
Have a blessed week
