A question about fasting becomes a revelation of Christ. John’s disciples and the Pharisees’ disciples are fasting, while the companions of Jesus are not. The contrast seems to invite a ranking of religious seriousness. Christ answers instead with a wedding: the Bridegroom is here. His presence gives the hour its joy, His coming removal gives the fast its grief and longing, and His new wine calls for a life that can receive it.
This follows the meal with tax collectors, where Christ named Himself as Physician. The same mercy that receives sinners will not leave discipleship as a patch on the old life. He comes to heal our desires, not merely to change our menu.
The Bridegroom and the days of fasting (Mark 2:18-20)
18 The disciples of John and of the Pharisees were fasting. Then they came and said to Him, “Why do the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?” 19 And Jesus said to them, “Can the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them they cannot fast. 20 But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.
The question about fasting grows naturally from the meal. Other disciples are abstaining; Jesus’ disciples are feasting. The comparison makes religious practice into a visible measure of seriousness: they fast, but Your disciples do not. Jesus does not answer by belittling fasting or by claiming that spiritual discipline no longer matters. He asks what time it is and who stands among them.
The phrase translated “friends of the bridegroom” is literally “sons of the bridal chamber,” the bridegroom’s wedding companions.1 Their conduct is governed by the presence of the bridegroom. At a wedding, fasting would contradict the gift of the hour. Jesus therefore places Himself at the center of both feast and fast. The decisive question is not which group appears more disciplined. It is how life answers the presence, Passion, and promise of Christ.
“Bridegroom” carries more than warmth. In Israel’s Scriptures, God speaks as the husband who loves and restores His people (Isaiah 54:5; Hosea 2:19-20). Jesus receives that nuptial image around Himself. Saint Cyril of Alexandria, commenting on Luke’s parallel, describes the manifestation of the Savior as a festival in which He united human nature to Himself “to be as it were His bride.”2 Salvation is communion: the Son of God comes near, joins His people to Himself, and makes His presence their joy.
Then the sentence turns: “the bridegroom will be taken away from them.” The verb aparthē can mean lifted away, removed, or taken away.1 Isaiah 53:8 speaks of the Servant’s judgment taken away in humiliation and His life taken from the earth.3 The Bridegroom’s removal sounds within that scriptural horizon: the shadow of the Cross has entered the feast. Jesus’ death will not be an accident at the end of a successful ministry. The Bridegroom knows that the days of visible companionship will give way to His removal, and “then they will fast.”
Christian fasting is born inside this mystery. It remembers the Bridegroom’s voluntary suffering, grieves over the sin for which He died, disciplines desires that compete with love, and longs for fuller communion with Him. It is Paschal because the One taken away is also the risen Lord. Fasting holds sorrow and hope together. Hunger becomes prayer when it says with the whole person, “You are the life I cannot give myself.”
This protects fasting from opposite distortions. It is not a badge used to rank families, parishes, or Christians, and it is not optional decoration for unusually devout people. Jesus says His disciples “will fast.” Early Christian practice confirms that the Church heard Him this way: the Didache directs fasting “on the fourth day and the Preparation”, Wednesday and Friday, the weekly days still kept in the Coptic Church.4 The calendar, food rule, and pastoral economy matter, but they serve communion with Christ. A precise fast with an accusing heart has missed the Bridegroom; a sincere longing that refuses obedience has also misunderstood love.
Orthodox fasting therefore belongs with prayer, almsgiving, repentance, and the Eucharistic life of the Church. Food is not evil, and the body is not an enemy. We abstain from good gifts so desire can be healed and redirected toward the Giver. The fast exposes how quickly irritation, comparison, appetite, or control rises when comfort is removed. That exposure is mercy if it leads us to confession and makes us gentler toward another person’s weakness.
New cloth, fresh wine, and renewed vessels (Mark 2:21-22)
21 No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; or else the new piece pulls away from the old, and the tear is made worse. 22 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine bursts the wineskins, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But new wine must be put into new wineskins.”
Jesus closes with two ordinary images of failed joining. Unshrunk cloth contracts and pulls against an old garment, enlarging the tear. Fresh wine continues to ferment and expand; a worn, brittle skin cannot yield with it. In both sayings the gift is lost when it is treated as an addition that requires no renewal of the vessel.
The images interpret everything that came before. Levi cannot remain seated at the tax office and wear discipleship as a patch. The scribes cannot add Jesus to a religious life protected from sinners. The disciples cannot copy fasting as an outward badge while missing the Bridegroom who gives it meaning. Christ’s mercy, joy, repentance, and ascetic life belong together because all arise from communion with Him.
Mark uses neos for the wine and kainos for the wineskins. Fresh wine needs fresh skins: the image joins the gift to the vessel’s capacity to receive it.5 St. Cyril, commenting on Luke’s parallel, joins this image to renewal by the Holy Spirit.2 This is formation, not fascination with whatever is recent.
The “old” in these sayings must not be identified with Jewish people, the Old Testament, or Israel’s Scriptures as something worthless. Jesus speaks within Israel’s story, fulfills the law and prophets, and answers a question about the right practice of fasting. The warning falls on every heart that wants Christ without surrender, including the baptized Christian who has spent years near the Church. An old wineskin can be a settled resentment, concealed dishonesty, attachment to praise, habitual contempt, or a religious identity used to resist repentance.
Neither parable teaches that human beings renew themselves before grace can enter. The same Lord who commands Levi to rise supplies the call that makes rising possible. The Holy Spirit renews the vessel through the life Christ gives: baptismal dying and rising, daily repentance, prayer, sacramental confession, Communion received with preparation, obedience, mercy, and endurance. Ascetic practice then becomes cooperation with grace rather than repair by willpower.
The wine also warns against spiritual possession. Grace is living, active, and ordered toward communion. We cannot store it inside an unchanged life as one more religious accomplishment. If prayer leaves our speech cruel, fasting leaves us proud, service leaves us demanding recognition, or theological knowledge leaves us unable to repent, the problem is not weakness in Christ’s gift. The vessel is resisting what the gift is meant to do.
Yet the final word is hopeful: Christ does make new wineskins. He does not discard sinners as ruined material. He calls, seats them with Himself, heals them, and forms them for the life of the Kingdom. Renewal may be costly because old habits have shaped the heart for years. It may involve restitution, a changed friendship, disciplined silence, forgiving an enemy, accepting pastoral guidance, or returning after failure. The pressure of the new wine is the pressure of divine life making room within us.
The Church’s Voice in Worship
At Matins on Tout 1, the Feast of El-Nayrouz and the beginning of the Coptic year, the Church reads Mark 2:18-22. The Liturgy hears Luke 4:14-30, Christ’s proclamation of the acceptable year of the Lord, and 2 Corinthians 5:11-6:13, where life in Christ is new creation.6 Read together, these lessons open the year with more than a wish for improvement: the Lord gives new life and calls us to receive it.
The Coptic year is counted from the era of the martyrs. On its first morning, the Bridegroom’s removal and His friends’ fasting can therefore be heard with particular tenderness. Christian joy does not forget the Cross; Christian fasting does not forget whose friends we are. The calendar begins in hope because the One who gives the wine can also renew the vessel.
Spiritual Fruit
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Fast for the Bridegroom rather than for a spiritual score. Notice what appears when comfort is reduced: irritability with family, comparison with another person’s rule, pride in strictness, or excuses disguised as freedom. Join the food fast to a specific prayer, hidden almsgiving, and restraint of the tongue. If illness, age, pregnancy, work, or pastoral economy changes the food rule, preserve the fast’s center through guidance rather than shame. The goal is hunger for Christ and a heart made gentler by His Cross.
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Ask where Christian practice has become a patch. Prayer, service, study, and fasting can sit on top of an unchanged hunger for praise, control, money, or vindication. Choose one practice and examine its fruit. Does it make confession easier, mercy quicker, speech cleaner, worship deeper, and hidden obedience more possible? Ask the Holy Spirit to renew the vessel, then accept the concrete change He brings to light. Christ does not merely decorate the old life. He makes His people capable of carrying new wine.
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Let longing become a prayer, not an accusation. The Bridegroom gives fasting its center. When hunger exposes how quickly you reach for consolation, turn that discovery into a brief prayer for Christ’s presence. Receive an appropriate rule with pastoral guidance, give something quietly to a person in need, and let the fast make room for another person instead of making you harder to live with.
Teaching Notes
Begin with the question of time: a wedding has its fitting joy, and the Bridegroom’s removal brings a fitting fast. Let the two parables explain why neither practice can be separated from communion and renewal.
Mark 2:18-20: fasting in relation to Christ
- Ask why Jesus answers a comparison of practices with a wedding image.
- Explain “friends of the bridegroom” as wedding companions whose conduct fits the bridegroom’s presence.
- Follow the turn in verse 20: the Bridegroom will be taken away, and then the disciples will fast. Feast, Cross, and future fasting belong to one Christological answer.
- Distinguish ascetic discipline from comparison. The fast is real, but its center is communion with Christ.
- Invite a practical examination: What does fasting reveal about the heart, and how should that discovery change prayer, almsgiving, speech, or confession?
Mark 2:21-22: renewal rather than patchwork
- Explain the physical logic first: shrinking cloth worsens the tear; fermenting wine bursts a brittle skin.
- Connect each image backward to the passage: Levi’s rising, table discipleship, healing mercy, and Bridegroom-centered fasting.
- Reject the anti-Jewish shortcut. “Old wineskins” does not mean Jewish people or a worthless Old Testament. The warning addresses every unrenewed heart.
- Follow the image’s demand: the life Christ gives renews the one receiving it, rather than decorating a closed heart.
- End with hope: Christ’s command calls for renewal, and His Spirit supplies the life by which renewal becomes possible.
Sources and Further Reading
Scripture is from NKJV.
Footnotes
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Comparative Greek texts for Mark 2:19-20 and the lexical entry for apairō, https://biblehub.com/text/mark/2-19.htm, https://biblehub.com/text/mark/2-20.htm, and https://biblehub.com/greek/522.htm. ↩ ↩2
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Saint Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on Luke, on Luke 5:34-36, especially printed pp. 88-90, public-domain R. Payne Smith translation, https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/cyril_on_luke_02_sermons_12_25.htm. ↩ ↩2
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Brenton, Septuagint, Isaiah 53:8, https://ebible.org/eng-Brenton/ISA53.htm. ↩
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Didache 8, “Concerning Fasting and Prayer,” https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0714.htm. ↩
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Comparative Greek text and lexical entries for Mark 2:22, neos, and kainos, https://biblehub.com/text/mark/2-22.htm, https://biblehub.com/greek/3501.htm, and https://biblehub.com/greek/2537.htm. ↩
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Coptic lectionary, Tout 1, Feast of El-Nayrouz, complete day, 2026-09-11, https://copticchurch.net/readings?g_year=2026&g_month=09&g_day=11. ↩