…"Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast… (Mk 2:18-22)
God is good, all the time.
Friends, I honestly look forward to the time when our parish churches will start to fill up again to overflowing, when we will see the faces, we miss so much in church again, when those who have not received the Eucharist, the bread of life for several moths will finally get to say amen to the words, the “body of Christ,” the “blood of Christ.”
There is no doubt from today’s gospel how Jesus desires for us to receive his body and blood regularly. In today's gospel, Jesus deploys the bridegroom and wedding guests' image to signify his extraordinary relationship with the church, his bride. When Jesus said, "Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast," he was already looking ahead to the Last Supper meal when he would institute the Eucharist as the eternal memorial of his saving death on the cross.
So, we understand that the bridegroom and the wedding guests’ scenario is typical of our Eucharistic assembly. Whenever we gather as a church to celebrate the Eucharist, Jesus continues to feed us with his own body and blood until the end of time. Whenever we attend the Mass, we become the guests at the feast with his bride the church.
The significance and the main take away from the passage is the understanding that the Eucharist is not something we fast from. No doctor will ask you to go on a diet from extraordinary life-giving food. Instead, if there is such nourishing food, we seek for it, we crave it. The eucharist is Jesus. It is the body of Christ; it is his soul and divinity, and its life-giving bread. And you want to know something? No one must naturally and deliberately choose to deny himself or herself of it.
Again, the Eucharist maintains a privilege and honor culture for us. It is eschatological meal. Therefore, the joy we derive from feast of the Mass is one that is stronger to overcome all adversity, anxiety, and concerns in life. Christ offers himself freely to us wherever we participate joyfully in the Eucharist, and I will trust that no one will refuse such privilege and honor.
Prayer blessings: Heavenly Father, the body and blood of your son give life. Teach me how to long for him and receive him with such deep honor and reverence. Jesus, true bread of life, I trust in you. Amen.