Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.
No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak, for the patch pulls away from the cloak, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
This past Ash Wednesday, my two year old and I walked to mass. He delights in music, especially the Alleluia, the only song he can “sing.”
He was perplexed, then, at the prayerful silence and lack of music. He repeatedly and audibly pleaded for “More singing! Alleluia! Alleluia!”
While the scene was fairly mortifying (Lent pun intended), my son was on to something. Those days were Alleluia days for our family. Our second child had been born days before. The bridegroom was with us.
It is a strange feeling when the liturgical seasons do not align with life’s seasons. The disciples of John and of Jesus in today’s Gospel must have felt this too. This dissonance, though, can wake us up to be more attuned to the grace of our lives: the incarnate love of a God who became human for us as well as the formation of the liturgical seasons.
—Paul Mitchell is a Jesuit educator who has stepped out of the classroom into full-time care of his two young sons. He is the author of Audacious Ignatius.
Lord, give me the grace to labor with you without seeking myself--to live the Kingdom in its full reality.
—John Futrell, SJ
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Ignatian spirituality reminds us that God pursues us in the routines of our home and work life, and in the hopes and fears of life's challenges. The founder of the Jesuits, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, created the Spiritual Exercises to deepen our relationship with Christ and to move our contemplation into service. May this prayer site anchor your day and strengthen your resolve to remember what truly matters.
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