Eucharistic Fast or Holy Communion Fast is the period before receiving Holy Communion during which one abstains from food and drink. Originally, this abstinence from food and drink also included medicine, beginning at midnight. There was dispensation only for those receiving viaticum. In 1957, Pope Pius XII mitigated the fast to three hours. In an effort to encourage Catholics to receive Holy Communion more regularly, Pope Paul VI further reduced the requirement to one hour in 1964. Canon 919 states that “One who is to receive the Most Holy Eucharist is to abstain from any food or drink, with the exception only of water and medicine, for at least the period of one hour before Holy Communion.”
In those days, when people had to walk a long distance to attend Mass, two young boys who were very close friends were trekking from their village to another village for Sunday Mass. They carried some bananas to eat after the Mass. They were observing the Holy Communion Fast, so they had no plan to eat before the Mass. Shortly before they reached the Church, one of them became very hungry, so he ate some of his bananas. During Holy Communion, the boy who did not eat before Mass began to monitor his friend to know if he would receive Holy Communion despite having broken the Holy Communion Fast. To his greatest surprise, the other boy went to receive Holy Communion.
After the Mass, the boy who observed the Fast tricked his friend to go greet the priest. As soon as they got to the priest, the one who observed the Fast stood behind his friend who broke his Fast to prevent him from running away, then he said to the priest, “Father, my friend here ate his banana a few minutes before Mass and he went and received Holy Communion.” The priest turned to the boy, who was already shivering in fear, and asked, “Is that true?” The boy then looked the priest straight in the eye and said, “Father, which is worse: for Jesus to sit on the banana or for the banana to sit on Jesus?”
My dearly beloved in Christ, after meditating for five consecutive Sundays on the sixth chapter of the Gospel According to John, we are now back to the Gospel according to Mark, which we will be reading until the end of this liturgical year. Today’s gospel passage talks about purification. Having reflected on John 6 with its teaching on the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, today’s gospel passage helps us to reflect on the question, “What purity do we require to approach the Eucharistic Banquet?”
In today’s gospel passage, the Pharisees, with some scribes who had come from Jerusalem, observed that some of Jesus’ disciples did not wash their hands before they ate their food. Then, they asked Jesus, “Why do your disciples not follow the tradition of the elders but instead eat a meal with unclean hands?” Jesus responded, “Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written: This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts. You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.” What is this divergence between Jesus and the orthodox Jews of his time about?
Initially, for the Jew, the Law meant two things: the Ten Commandments and the First Five Books of the Jewish Scripture (Christian Old Testament), the Pentateuch, which contains a certain number of detailed regulations and instructions. The Jews were satisfied with the two understandings of the Law for a long time. But in the fourth and fifth centuries before Christ, some Jewish Legal Experts, the Scribes, amplified the Law into thousands of little rules and regulations governing every possible action and situation of human life. Such became the oral law or the tradition of the elders, which they also later wrote down. One aspect of this oral law is the washing of hands before eating, which was the basis for the accusation against the disciples of Jesus in today’s gospel passage. This hand washing was not about hygiene, but about religious rituals done in a stipulated way; it was a ceremonial cleansing from contact with non-Jews and any unclean object. The Pentateuch only prescribed this washing of hands for the priest before he could eat the meat of animals sacrificed in the Temple, but the Scribes and the Pharisees later extended it to all Jews, which was an alteration of the Law.
On the other hand, Jesus warned against any approach to religion that reduces it to a mere multiplication and observance of laws. We cannot bribe God by external observance of laws, especially those we have formulated. God looks more at our hearts and how much love we have. True love does not rely on numbers. Imagine a wife and a husband truly in love, they do not keep a list of proofs of their mutual love. They do not keep a list of the number of smiles they exchange, the list of lovely words they exchange, the number of kisses and various ways they show affection. True love is not mechanical. Jesus recommends total openness to love that comes from the heart, free, sincere, and open to divine grace. My dearly beloved in Christ, today’s response from Jesus is not an attempt to condemn orderliness in religion; it is not an invitation to disobedience. Another way to understand Jesus here is, “The Law is made for human beings and not human beings for the Law.” Before you judge the other person, measure your love. If half the energy we put into judging and condemning others goes into loving them, the world would be a better place, we would live a happier life, and then we can truly say, “The kingdom of God has truly come.”
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