We appreciate from the Gospel today the imagery of a wedding feast that Jesus employs to illustrate why there was a certain difference in behavior between the Pharisees and Jesus' disciples. The matter was about fasting. The Jews fasted periodically, while Jesus' disciples did not fast. Jesus uses the wedding feast as the justification for His disciples' not fasting. Can they fast when the bridegroom is with them? Then, He introduces a detail one would not normally expect. Bridegrooms are not taken away. They leave the feast with their wives. But Jesus claims that the groom is taken away. When that takes place, the disciples will fast. Our blessed Lord uses an imagery used in the Old Testament, where a wedding feast is used to describe the Messiah having come to be with His people. He is Emmanuel. The people of God and His Messiah are united in a wedding feast, so to speak. But then the groom will be taken away. This alludes to His being captured and made to undergo His Passion and Death on the Cross.
