From religious practices to communion with God
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. (2:18-20)
Fasting is to help come in communion with God. It helps to focus on spiritual realities instead of material realities. It has nothing magical, it is a tool for a purpose. The human bodies spend a lot of energy when they have to digest food. Through fasting for a time, you can concentrate your energy on God, rather than on digestion.
John the Baptist was preparing people to welcome me - the Messiah, in purification and repentance. I was the announced Messiah. When I came I wanted people to rejoice while I was with them, not to fast. After I was crucified, my disciples did fast and mourn. Then, when I appeared to them after my resurrection, I had a breakfast with some of them, as I helped Peter to welcome my forgiveness and to focus on love.
It is important that people don’t confuse the life of love to which they are called, love for God and love for your neighbor, with the practices that can be of some help to move toward this goal. Fasting is a practice that is of some help, but it should not be put at the same level as prayer. Prayer is learning to live in communion with me, to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Prayer is not limited to a few words spoken with the hope that we hear them, it is the art of entering and remaining in relationship with me, through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Prayer, communion with us, is much more important than any means of grace, like reading the Bible or fasting for instance. As a matter of fact, all the means of grace should be practiced in a prayerful attitude, for them to be of some spiritual benefit.
Humans have always sought methods to be closer to God. if the purpose was to be close to God, when this becomes the case, then the methods become less important. This is what happened concerning fasting: when I was with my disciples they did not need to fast because through me they were close to God.
When people read the Bible, sometimes they are tempted to think that the goal is the Bible itself, to get an insight or to connect biblical ideas together. Yet, the most important goal for reading and meditating the Bible is to come into communion with me, the Living Word of God. When you forget this, you can become proud of your intellectual knowledge, and this pride will bring divisions and tensions rather than unity in the Church. Look at how many Christians are fighting because they interpret differently a specific verse. Truth is important, yet truth is not only a concept but the way to come to God - I am the way, the truth and the life. As in the days of my coming on earth, people often read the Scriptures without welcoming me, they read the texts that speak about me but they don’t welcome my presence to rule in their hearts and lives. They can even make theories on why they continue to sin, in order to justify their way of life. That is not what I want and I came to enable people to live a holy life through a living communion with me, through the Holy Spirit. For believers, Bible reading or Bible meditation are very important tools that should help them to be focused on me. All Scriptures speak about me, about the way for humans to be united to God - I am this way, and I became the perfect example of this perfect unity between man and God. I am man and I am God.
When you read the Bible, seek us first and foremost - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. As you find us, rejoice with us of the love that is pouring in your life and that you can pour into others as a channel of our grace. Our message is not complicate, it is a message of love and holiness, of obedience and of joy. Remember what is the goal of your life: it is to be united to God’s love. Use all you do as a mean to this end, and don’t focus on any of these means as a goal in itself. The more you are loved, the more you learn to love, and the more you will be blessed and peaceful, happy and joyful.
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 destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.” (2:21-22)
So many practice religion as an end in itself, as a set of practices that are supposed to give them the peace of heart they long for. Yet, practices can at best give a superficial peace. I am Jesus, the prince of peace, and it is only in welcoming me and living in communion with me that the deep peace of the Father can come to dwell in you.
The problem, during my years of ministry on earth, was that people did all these practices and naively thought that through them they could become righteous before God. All these practices, the sacrifices, fasts and petition prayers, were supposed to be ways to come to me and to the Father, but they could not by themselves give righteousness. They were not an end in themselves. To try to repair them by adding a new practice would have been useless, risking to even tear down and damage the old practices. The real and huge hole in this approach was that no practice could make someone righteous before God. Only by grace, through obedient faith in me, does it become possible for humans to become righteous and renew their relationship with God. This deliverance from darkness, from this huge hole in the garment of religion, could not come by adding a new patch to it. To welcome this deliverance, this grace of the communion with the Father, this new wine of the love of God, people needed to be renewed, to become new wineskins. The key element is that they could not do it on their own, they needed to come to me and ask for forgiveness in humility and in faith. It is not through human effort that the relationship with the Father is renewed, it is renewed through the gift of our love, through grace. If people want to welcome this new wine of love, let them repent of their sins, come to trust in my sacrifice on the cross and welcome me as their savior and Lord. Then I will make of them new wineskins, new creations. Then they will be able to welcome the new wine of God’s Spirit, the wine of the Father’s love.
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