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| Wine Skin by Nelly Bube |
Mark 2:18-22
Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)
The Question about Fasting
18 Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting; and people came and said to him, “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” 19 And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. 20 The days will come, when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. 21 No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; if he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. 22 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; if he does, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but new wine is for fresh skins.”[a]
Footnotes:
- Mark 2:22 Other ancient authorities omit but new wine is for fresh skins
Cited in the Catechism: In promulgating the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Blessed John Paul II explained that the Catechism "is a statement of the Church's faith and of catholic doctrine, attested to or illumined by Sacred Scripture, the Apostolic Tradition and the Church's Magisterium." He went on to "declare it to be a sure norm for teaching the faith and thus a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion" (Fidei Depositum). Passages from this Gospel reading are cited in the Catechism, paragraph 796.
Commentary
A discussion on fasting
2:18–22. Using a particular case, Christ’s reply tells us about the connexion between the Old and New Testaments. In the Old Testament the bridegroom has not yet arrived; in the New Testament he is present, in the person of Christ. With him began the messianic times, a new era distinct from the previous one. The Jewish fasts, therefore, together with their system of religious observances, must be seen as a way of preparing the people for the coming of the Messiah. Christ shows the difference between the spirit he has brought and that of the Judaism of his time. This new spirit will not be something extra, added on to the old; it will bring to life the perennial teachings contained in the older Revelation. The newness of the Gospel—just like new wine—cannot fit within the moulds of the Old Law.
But this passage says more: to receive Christ’s new teaching people must inwardly renew themselves and throw off the strait-jacket of old routines.
Cf. the note on Mt 9:14–17.
[This passage is interesting, not so much because it tells us about the sort of fasting practised by the Jews of the time—particularly the Pharisees and John the Baptist’s disciples—but because of the reason Jesus gives for not requiring his disciples to fast in that way. His reply is both instructive and prophetic. Christianity is not a mere mending or adjusting of the old suit of Judaism. The redemption wrought by Jesus involves a total regeneration. Its spirit is too new and too vital to be suited to old forms of penance, which will no longer apply.
We know that in our Lord’s time Jewish theology schools were in the grip of a highly complicated casuistry to do with fasting, purifications etc, which smothered the simplicity of genuine piety. Jesus’ words point to that simplicity of heart with which his disciples might practise prayer, fasting and almsgiving (cf. Mt 6:1–18 and notes to same). From apostolic times onwards it is for the Church, using the authority given it by our Lord, to set out the different forms fasting should take in different periods and situations.]
2:19–20. Jesus describes himself as the bridegroom (cf. also Lk 12:35–36; Mt 25:1–13; Jn 3:29), thereby fulfilling what the prophets had said about the relationship between God and his people (cf. Hos 2:18–22; Is 54:5ff). The apostles are the guests at the wedding, invited to share in the wedding feast with the bridegroom, in the joy of the Kingdom of heaven (cf. Mt 22:1–14).
In v. 20 Jesus announces that the bridegroom will be taken away from them: this is the first reference he makes to his passion and death (cf. Mk 8:31; Jn 2:19; 3:14). The vision of joy and sorrow we see here epitomizes our human condition during our sojourn on earth.
Source: The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries. Biblical text from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and by Scepter Publishers in the United States. We encourage readers to purchase The Navarre Bible for personal study. See Scepter Publishers for details.
"Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ." St Jerome
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