6 July, 2024 | Saturday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Reading : Am 9:11-15

Gospel Mt 9:14-17

The disciples of John approached Jesus and said,

“Why do we and the Pharisees fast much,

but your disciples do not fast?”

Jesus answered 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.

No one patches an old cloak with a piece of unshrunken cloth,

for its fullness pulls away from the cloak and the tear gets worse.

People do not put new wine into old wineskins.

Otherwise the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the skins are ruined.

Rather, they pour new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.” 

Reflection:

 Fasting is one of the most powerful spiritual disciplines. Through fasting and prayer, the Holy Spirit can transform our life. It is one of the many acts of penance by which one pays for the debts of one’s own sins and for those of others’  and enters into a closer relationship with God. Pharisees had lost sense of it and merely kept it as a show unto people, whereas the disciples of John sincerely followed it as a preparation to welcome the Redeemer. Jesus’ disciples were not following it because they were with the Redeemer who was compassionate and merciful and who was the one who could purify them of all their sins and make them one with him; hence they were clean. Therefore they were as if in the midst of a wedding feast and being with the Bridegroom they cannot think of fasting. What kind of relationship is ours with Jesus?

Activity:

Ask the Holy Spirit to transform your life.