Matthew 9:14-15
Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)
The Question about Fasting
14 Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast,[a] but your disciples do not fast?”15 And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come, when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.
Footnotes:
a. Matthew 9:14 Other ancient authorities add much or often
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). No passages from this Gospel reading are cited in the Catechism.
Commentary
A discussion on fasting
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.
9:15. “The wedding guests”: literally, “the sons of the house where the wedding is being celebrated”—an expression meaning the bridegroom’s closest friends. This is an example of how St Matthew uses typical Semitic turns of phrase, presenting Jesus’ manner of speech.
This “house” to which Jesus refers has a deeper meaning; set beside the parable of the guests at the wedding (Mt 22:1ff), it symbolizes the Church as the house of God and the body of Christ: “Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, but Christ was faithful over God’s house as a son. And we are his house if we hold fast our confidence and pride in our hope” (Heb 3:5–6). The second part of the verse refers to the violent death Jesus would meet.
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.
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"Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ." St Jerome
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