Luke 5: 33-39

"And Jesus said to them, 'Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? The days will come, when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days'....But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins." (vv. 34, 38 – Revised Standard Version, 2nd Catholic Edition)

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How is the question of fasting resolved in the parable of the wineskins?

I have always taken the parable of the new/old wineskins to be an illustration of the problem that the scribes and Pharisees have in trying to shoe-horn Jesus into their religious framework: strict obedience to the Law (as they see it). Isn't it so easy to do that? We quite naturally develop a framework into which we can neatly compact our thoughts, words and actions and how we relate to other people and also how we "need" and expect them to relate to us. When they don't, what happens? No wonder there is so much offense taken and received, especially over an anonymous and comfortable medium such as the internet. So, the question is, how can we reasonably expect people to engage us on our own terms if we have not taken the time to explain what those terms are and expose them to the light of day to see how they stand up to our faith, our relationships, or other peoples' ideas and conceptions? Doing so is only scary if we reject out of hand the categorical imperative of all reasonable discourse: 'what if I might be wrong'. I think this gets to the root of the criticisms of the scribes and Pharisees.

The prescriptions of the Mosaic Law are not bad things in and of themselves. Fasting was, and is, a great good for those called to exercise it. [But, not everyone is called to exercise every discipline in the same way. If you are hypoglycemic, then fasting in any (and I hate to use the word because it can be taken the wrong way as an open invitation to comparison where none is needed or justified, but...) significant way is probably not an option]. These prescriptions as stated served their intended purpose until the coming of the Messiah. In Jesus, the former signs and types of the heavenly reality have given way to the real thing. Whatever came before has now to give way to that which it pointed to, but could never fully be. The new reality simply cannot be contained within anyone's previous conception because our human insights are necessarily limited by our finite condition. (Think: Doctrine of the Trinity)

So now, we no longer fast because of the letter of the Law, but because of our love and devotion to the One who fulfills the Law and calls us to a life of perfect holiness in imitation of His own.

It could also be thought of this way. We can think about and conceptualize "love" in the abstract. It is a concept that can fit neatly into our categories of thought and be contemplated without any serious mental gymnastics. But, once love becomes actualized in a relationship of two people, then the theory must give way to the reality which is tangentially related to our mental conceptions but oh so much more. It both fulfills and surpasses our mental expectations and is so wonderfully more complex in reality (Poof! There go those old wine skins!) than when it exists as nothing more than a platonic 'form' in the mind of the individual.

Peace