Luke 5 34-39 question about fasting

Our gospel reading today comes from a section of Luke called “Jesus’ Galilean Ministry”. This section provides a scriptural base for our belief in the coming of the Kingdom, and is also expressed in the 3rd Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary titled, “Jesus Proclaims the Kingdom.”

Jesus’ promise of everlasting life in the Kingdom, and the means to obtain it are most likely the major reason we are part of the Catholic faith community. In the gospel Jesus tells his followers of the coming of the Kingdom and that his presence with them is a fore taste of that Kingdom.

He invites them to a new relationship, a marriage, between them and His Father.  Although based in Judaism, the New Relationship requires new forms of expression, doctrine and understanding. The old patterns of religion cannot contain His new ways, which Jesus explains as new wine in new wine skins. The wedding banquet, his time with them, is a time of joy and feasting rather then a time of mourning and fasting. The sorrow and fasting will come after his passion and death but give rise to the joy and feasting of the resurrection.

We in our attempt to bring about and be part of the Kingdom do indeed experience both joy and sadness to different degrees. The world and many around us ask, “Why do you not conform and be part of the comfortable old garment”, the easy way of the humankind.

Unfortunately we do try on the garment of the world and sin. But within the “new wine skin”, sin, that is so contrary to the building up of the kingdom, finds forgiveness for those that seek it. And Jesus words today can be a source of consolation for us when he, without a doubt, tells us the coming of the kingdom includes both sadness and joy. This is how His Kingdom is brought about by periods of fasting and feasting.

That is the coming of the kingdom, but life in the Kingdom for Jesus followers is our final goal and has only one of these characteristics, that of eternal joy.