Navarre Bible Commentary:Monday, 2nd Week in Ordinary Time

Mark 2:18–22

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?” 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. The days will come, when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. 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. 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.”     

Catholic Exegesis:

The Second Vatican Council teaches  that if we are to derive the true meaning from the sacred texts,  attention must be devoted “not only to their content but to the unity of the whole of Scripture, the living tradition of the entire Church, and the analogy of faith. […] Everything to do with the interpretation of Scripture is ultimately subject to the judgment of the Church, which exercises the divinely conferred communion and ministry of watching over and interpreting the Word of God” (Dei Verbum, 12).

St. John Paul II, when he promulgated the Catechism of the Catholic Church,  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).

Cited in the Catechism:

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.

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.

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