The Holy Priest-Martyr Methodius, Bishop of Patara (311)
Apostles’ Fast.
Romans 10:11-11:2; Matthew 11:16-20.
Read Matthew 11:16-20
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
ohn the Baptist had a great reputation for fasting and the ascetic life; Jesus did not. Jesus did fast, but most of his fasting happened in private (for example, during his temptation in the desert at the beginning of his public ministry). In public, Jesus didn’t appear to emphasize fasting, at least not as much as John the Baptist. Today’s gospel shows that some people tried to manipulate this difference to make a false distinction between Jesus and John.
The solution for Christians is not to emphasize either fasting or feasting, but to observe both. And by recognizing John the Baptist as the greatest of the prophets, while speaking of himself as the Bridegroom, Jesus points to these two realities.
In today’s society, there is a false type of feasting, a form of celebration that doesn’t really celebrate anything other than the great abundance of our age. We have restaurants called “Fat Tuesdays,” named after the day before Lent in the Roman Catholic calendar – this is the most obvious example of a widespread attitude that needs no excuse for a feast, and no excuse to avoid a fast. But it doesn’t make sense to observe every day of the year as a kind of “feast before the fast” if we never actually fast! And it makes even less sense if we don’t observe the feast of feasts, the Lord’s resurrection, which Christian celebrate (and prepare for with fasting) not only on Pascha, but every Sunday.
The last words in today’s gospel help us understand the way that this tension between feasting and fasting is resolved. Jesus takes his opponents to task, not because they have been either feasting or fasting, or ignoring either principle, but because they have not repented. Fasting should lead us to a deeper repentance. Both feasting and fasting should give meaning to the fruits of our repentance, pointing us to how God has reconciled us to himself. The world struggles to understand feasting, because it doesn’t know the real joy of the resurrection. In the same way, it doesn’t understand fasting, because it does not understand the gravity of sin. Christians can hold both truths in their hands, and practice both with joy in moderation.