8th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?
(Mk 2:18-22)

Weddings at the Time of Jesus

Newly-married couples do not go away on a honeymoon. Instead they stay at home and celebrate for a whole week with their friends and relatives. During that time they are treated as if they were a king and a queen. And since they were generally poor, this could be the happiest week of their lives.

As long as they have the bridegroom with them they cannot fast.

Fasting is a sign of sadness. How can the disciples of Jesus be sad when they are in the company of Jesus?

But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day.

Jesus is being honest with his disciples. It will not always be a time of feasting. Times will be hard. In fact, discipleship will mean martyrdom for many of his disciples.

No one sews a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old cloak. Likewise, no one pours new wine into old wineskins.

It is easy to understand why it is irrational to use a new cloth to patch an old cloth. First, the color will not match. Second, the new cloth will shrink while the old will not. It is not as easy to understand why you can't use old wineskins for new wine.

At that time you don't go around using bottles to store wine. You bring along wine using wineskins. But new wine especially is not stable. It ferments. And in the process of fermentation, gas is generated. As gas builds up, pressure increases. At a certain piont, the old wineskins will give way. And you lose both wine and wineskins.

LESSON

There are two lessons for this Sunday. The first is about happiness. The second is being open to new things.

I want to speak about happiness. But first let me say something about being open to new things. And it is this: You can tell how old you are by the amount of pain you feel in front of something new. There is some truth in it, doesn't it?

Now about happiness.

Alan Robles wrote an article a year ago. He writes for the South China Morning Post and lectures at the International Institute for Journalism in Berlin. He asks: Despite burdens like poverty and pollution, Filipinos tend to be happy. Why?

For Filipinos, happiness isn't material—it's social. We're happiest in a group: family, friends, immediate community, even strangers.

Four years ago, 43-year-old Nestor Castillo lost his job as a janitor at the City Hall. He and his family are now scavengers, living out of a wooden pushcart. This is Castillo's idea of happiness: "Once I found nearly half a fried chicken wrapped in plastic," he told me. "I knew it was still edible because it was still cold, just came from the refrigerator. We had a feast that day." For Filipinos, happiness isn't a goal: it's a tool for survival.

If you ask me, there's one more reason why we can be happy in the midst of life's difficulties, our faith in God. Someone said: There will be points in your life when you can't handle problems alone. Think about SOMEONE who's more powerful, and who loves you dearly to take care of you. Having faith in GOD will give you hope. And that hope makes happiness possible.

Believe it or not, if you have God in your life, you can be happy.