NEW BEGINNINGS
It was actually
easier to be precise about fasting than it was to love God with one's whole
being and to love one's neighbor as Jesus did.
Few
people like changes in their way of doing things. Maybe you can remember back
when some states were thinking about no longer getting gasoline by the gallon
but by the liter? There were many people upset by the change. The service
attendants tried to explain that the United States was finally starting to use
a system followed throughout most of the world. People's response was, "I
think they should have to change, not us." That sounds familiar!
Jesus
faced much the same difficulty in His own day. Many of the religious leaders
had become accustom to a legalistic formalism with very little heart. For them,
it was more important to abide by minute fasting regulations, for example, than
it was to help a neighbor in distress. The Law had pretty much replaced the
lawgiver himself. Jesus met opposition in trying to change all that. He wanted
to show that love is the essence of religion, and regulations are valid only if
God's purpose is being served. He was asking for something that was really much
more demanding than simply abiding by the Law. It was actually easier to be
precise about fasting than it was to love God with one's whole being and to
love one's neighbor as Jesus did.
Today,
in Luke's Gospel, the response to Jesus required a new and bigger way of
thinking. During my reflection time on the Scripture readings this morning I
had to ask myself a question: Which comes first, fasting or feasting? The
disciples of John the Baptist were upset with Jesus' disciples because they did
not fast. Fasting was one of the three most important religious duties, along
with prayer and almsgiving. Jesus gave a simple explanation. There's a time for
fasting and a time for feasting. To walk as a disciple with Jesus is to
experience a whole new joy of relationship, like a wedding celebration between
a husband and wife. But there also comes a time when the Lord's disciples must
bear the cross of affliction and purification. For the disciple, there is both
a time for rejoicing in the Lord's presence and celebrating His goodness, as
well as a time for seeking the Lord with humility and fasting and for mourning
our weaknesses. The same goes for us today!!!
Do
we just look back or do we look at today, the present, and the future, too?
Every day is a new beginning, as the psalmist has written, "This is the
day the Lord has made let us rejoice and be glad in it" (Ps 118:24).
Looking within the Church, the Second Vatican Council - the providential
movement of God's Spirit upon the Church in our time - was an effort to return to
the teachings and practices of the early Church. Full and active participation
in the liturgy was restored. There was an insistence on the responsibility of
the laity under the guidance of the clergy. Emphasis was restored to the
importance of the Church as a community, a family under God as Father.
Jesus
warned His disciples about the problem of the "closed mind" that
refuses to except and learn new things. New wine cannot be put into old
wineskins. The same holds true for us today. But we might also ask this
question: Are we to reject the old in place of the new? Just as there is a
right place and a right time for fasting and feasting, so there is a right
place for the old as well as the new. Jesus says the Kingdom of Heaven is like
a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old. How
impoverished we would be if we only had the Old Testament or the New Testament,
rather than both. The Lord gives us wisdom so we can make the best use of both
the old and the new. He doesn't want us to hold rigidly to the past and to be
resistant to the new.
Our
challenge is that we need to pray that God will open wide our hearts, and the
hearts of all people of the Church, and continue to accept new beginnings!