And both are preserved

Gn 27,1-5.15-29; Ps 134; Mt 9,14-17
6 JULY

God founded the relationship of the sons of Israel with him on the basis of his law and of his commandments. Instead, His people wants to establish a relationship made up of human works without any reference to the Commandments. God does not love this religion and reveals it through the prophets. He wants the religion of listening and of obedience.

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Heap your holocausts upon your sacrifices; eat up the flesh! In speaking to your fathers on the day I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I gave them no command concerning holocaust or sacrifice. This rather is what I commanded them: Listen to my voice; then I will be your God and you shall be my people. Walk in all the ways that I command you, so that you may prosper. But they obeyed not, nor did they pay heed. They walked in the hardness of their evil hearts and turned their backs, not their faces, to me. From the day that your fathers left the land of Egypt even to this day, I have sent you untiringly all my servants the prophets. Yet they have not obeyed me nor paid heed; they have stiffened their necks and done worse than their fathers. When you speak all these words to them, they will not listen to you either; when you call to them, they will not answer you. Say to them: This is the nation which does not listen to the voice of the Lord, its God, or take correction. Faithfulness has disappeared; the word itself is banished from their speech (Jer 7,21-28).

Hear, then, what the Lord says: Arise, present your plea before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice! Hear, O mountains, the plea of the Lord, pay attention, O foundations of the earth! For the Lord has a plea against his people, and he enters into trial with Israel. O my people, what have I done to you, or how have I wearied you? Answer me! For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, from the place of slavery I released you; And I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. My people, remember what Moab’s King Balak planned, and how Balaam, the son of Beor, answered him . . . from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the just deeds of the Lord. With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow before God most high? Shall I come before him with holocausts, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with myriad streams of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my crime, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? You have been told, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: Only to do right and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God. Hark! the Lord cries to the city. (It is wisdom to fear your name!) Hear, O tribe and city council, You whose rich men are full of violence, whose inhabitants speak falsehood with deceitful tongues in their heads! (Mi 6,1-12).

If the Lord does not want a religion of practice without obedience, because his religion is only that of obedience to his Word, can Jesus sew a piece of new cloth on a dress already declared old by his Father? Can he pour the new wine of true religion into a wineskin that has not been able to contain any law of the Lord? The new cloth is his Word. The new wine is also his Word. If obedience to his Word is the only foundation of true religion, other things are not needed. Fasting must be carried out both in the virtue of charity – one renounces something so that others have something – and both in the virtue of sobriety and temperance. We renounce to the most, to the unnecessary, because it is harmful to our life. It is given to the poor, according to the Law of Jesus the Lord. New word and new religion.

Then the disciples of John approached him and said, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast (much), but your disciples do not fast?” Jesus answered them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one patches an old cloak with a piece of unshrunken cloth, for its fullness pulls away from the cloak and the tear gets worse. People do not put new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the skins are ruined. Rather, they pour new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”

When we live in full obedience the Word of Jesus, we are in a daily fast, because we give the body only what is necessary to it. What is not strictly needed to the body becomes a great instrument of mercy, almsgiving and charity.

Mother of God, Angels and Saints, teach the people of God how to live true religion.