Please read the Scripture passage before the homily.
It is disciples of John who ask this question of Jesus. These are not adversaries of Jesus. These are friends of the best man. There is a wedding coming up, and the best man has some questions.
There is a wedding, and we are on the guest list. More than this, we are an integral part of the wedding. There is no fasting at a wedding, but there is a jubilant party.
The U.K. is preparing to coronate Charles III, but we are celebrating the coming of the Kingdom of God. In Jesus the banquet of heaven, alias the marriage feast of the Lamb, is upon us. Charles III can move over for a greater and more perfect banquet and coronation.
If we do fast from food, it is so that we can feast with others. If we fast from food, it is only a sign that we are fasting from selfishness so that others can rejoice with us and feast on good works.
Lent prepares us for the wedding day of the Easter Vigil and the wedding feast of Easter. Lent, the Easter Vigil, and Easter prepare us for our definitive entrance into the wedding banquet of eternal life when, through physical death, we enter the wedding banquet of eternity with the Lord Jesus, the Bridegroom.
Jesus told the disciples of John that we would fast when the Bridegroom is taken away by crucifixion. However, now we live in the between time when the bridegroom is with us in the Bridegroom’s Church and yet is absent to us as we await the fulness of his coming in glory. Our Lenten fasting and good works span the gap between then and now, the then of the fulness and the now of partiality.