Coffee With God

Reflection: Mark 2:18-22

For the Jewish religion, fasting was one of the three most important religious duties, along with prayer and almsgiving. In today’s gospel, the disciples of John the Baptist and the Pharisees have a problem: Jesus does not endorse the practice of fasting. Jesus has a simple explanation. There’s a time for fasting and a time for feasting (or celebrating). Remember, the Gospel of Mark begins with saying, “the Good News of Jesus Christ”. The whole gospel speaks of a celebration, because Jesus, the Christ, is among us and speaks to us, and makes our lives happy. There is no time for despair and crying. To be a disciple of Jesus is to experience a whole new joy of relationship similar to the joy of celebrating a wedding party with the groom and bride. God is with us, and he will not give up on his children. Jesus goes on to warn his disciples about the problem of the “closed mind” that refuses to learn new things. Jesus used an image familiar to his audience — new and old wineskins. How do we understand today the examples of new patch on old cloth and the new wine in old wineskins? In today’s terms We should be talking about “Do not install outdated or pirated programmes into your new computer”. The Lord has offered us the new wine – his forgiveness, mercy and the good news of salvation; but unfortunately we refuse to change the wineskin, we refuse to forgive, refuse to be merciful. Despite praying the Lord’s Prayer numerous times a day, we continue to believe that punishments for the wrongs is the best way to serve justice. Gospel values of forgiveness, mercy, love etc. are the new wine of Jesus. Our stubbornness ruins so many of us who are good, but we enter into a spirit of vanity, of pride, of being seen… In any case, the message is clear: the Good News of Jesus invites us be joyous people, people of celebration: because God is near. His mercy and forgiveness are available for everyone. God does not want us to be afraid of him. When I consider myself to be a good Catholic but I fail to worry about the problems of others – their poverty, hunger, illnesses and the many sufferings, I am merely a hypocrite, trying to do some patch work on my age-old clothing. If the clothing is already worn out, it is high-time to change and put on the new clothes of the Beatitudes: meekness, humility, patience in suffering, love for justice, ability to endure persecution, not judging others.