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Master·evangeli.net

Today's Gospel + short theological explanation

Monday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time
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Gospel text (Mk 2:18-22): The disciples of John and of the Pharisees were accustomed to fast. People came to him and objected, “Why do the disciples of John and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” Jesus answered them, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? (...) But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day (...) No one pours new wine into old wineskins (...). Rather, new wine is poured into fresh wineskins.”

The New Alliance happened by Jesus Christ guides the Old to his fullness

EDITORIAL TEAM evangeli.net (based on texts by Benedict XVI) (Città del Vaticano, Vatican)

Today, Jesus Christ —in connection with the "malicious" question about fasting— presents Himself as the "spouse" of the promised nuptials of God to His people, thus gradually revealing His condition of Messiah and His existence within God’s mystery. In Jesus, in an unsuspected way, God and man become one, celebrate their "wedding", which continues through the Cross, the moment when the bridegroom will be taken away.

Furthermore, the Lord’s answer clarifies the connection between the Old and the New Pact: the new spirit is not a patch added to the Old one, but the improvement of the teachings which the Old Testament had already pointed to. The Law is neither denied nor marginalized; on the contrary its inherent expectation is leads to fulfillment. The "new Moses" will be the intermediary of a Pact superior to the one Moses could have ever brought from Sinai…

—Jesus: Your love offered in the Cross is the new and special wine reserved for the nuptial banquet of God with mankind.