For three months, Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer had been prisoners of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, accused along with other aid workers of trying to convert Afghans to Christianity.  In October of 2001 their prison cells was shaken by the thunder of U. S. bombs falling on the city of Kabul.  Weeks later, after a cold, sleepless night in a steel shipping container, the girls and their colleagues found themselves in a new prison south of Kabul, with rockets crashing down on the contested town they were in.  Suddenly, men were banging on their prison doors.  They believed that their Taliban captors were returning, and now their fate was really uncertain as the situation around them dissolved into chaos.  Then, to their surprise, an anti-Taliban soldier came in with reams of ammunition around his neck.  And he was just shouting two wonderful words – “You’re free!  You’re free!”

Jesus gives a much greater call to freedom. The freedom Jesus offers is better than freedom from earthly bondage. “Freedom does not mean I am able to do whatever I want to do. That’s the worst kind of bondage. Freedom means I have been set free to become all that God wants me to be, to achieve all that God wants me to achieve, to enjoy all that God wants me to enjoy.”  Warren W. Wiersbe

Jesus Calls us out of Bondage to Sin. Levi was in Bondage to Sin. We are all in bondage to sin. The quicker we come to realize and admit this reality, the sooner we may find mercy and grace from God through Jesus Christ.

The call to freedom included a call to leave, (He was called out of sin). We cannot follow Jesus and stay in sin. Jesus did not play, “Let’s make a deal” with Levi. Has your experience with Christ had the leaving element? If it has not, perhaps you are still yet lost. It then includes a call to believe. It is here implied, in that it is the other side of repentance. Much of the problem with our churches is the notion of easy-believism. That is, faith without repentance. Faith that does not lead to action. This is not biblical or saving faith.

ILL: Booker T. Washington describes an ex-slave from Va in Up from Slavery:

“I found that this man had made a contract with his master, two or three years previous to the Emancipation Proclamation, to the effect that the slave was to be permitted to buy himself, by paying so much per year for his body; and while he was paying for himself, he was to be permitted to labor where and for whom he pleased. “Finding that he could secure better wages in Ohio, he went there.  When freedom came, he was still in debt to his master some three hundred dollars. Not withstanding that the Emancipation Proclamation freed him from any obligation to his master, this black man walked the greater portion of the distance back to where his old master lived in Virginia, and placed the last dollar, with interest, in his hands.” Faith that leads us back to bondage or keeps us in bondage is not the faith God demands.

Finally, a call to follow, “A converted man will not wish to go to heaven alone.” J. C. Ryle in Holiness. The founding Fathers believed in the cause of freedom. Their belief led to action. Following is the activity of faith. Faith’s evidence is following.

C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, page 37: “Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need any forgiveness.”

It was inappropriate for groomsmen to fast until after a wedding banquet had ended. Weddings lasted seven days, and participants or ‘guests of the bridegroom’ means either the groomsmen (compare Jn 3:29) or the guests-were expected to participate joyfully. Sages even interrupted their schools to hail passing bridal processions (ARN 4A).

New cloth had not yet shrunk, and when it began to shrink after being patched onto a garment that had finished its shrinking, the patch would tear loose from the garment, making the tear worse (Mt 9:16). In the same way, old wineskins had been stretched to the limit as wine fermented and expanded in them. Because old wineskins had already been stretched to the limit, if they were filled with new wine it would ultimately burst them when it expanded. Traditional rituals must never become a straitjacket that hinder us from celebrating sinners’ embrace of the good news of God’s kingdom.

The object of fasting is to become closer to God through prayer and the denial of a very worldly pleasure: that of eating. Jesus’ answer to the disciples of John makes clear that there is no need for fasting as long as He is with them because He, Jesus, is God and, therefore, the unity with God that is sought through fasting is already achieved through Christ’s presence.

Jesus’ use of the word “mourning” in the passage is important because it both illustrates the feeling of great loss or emptiness that fasting attempts to remedy, and also prophecies the loss of Jesus in his worldly form upon His death and later Ascension. Jesus also refers to himself as the “bridegroom”, an image important to the expression of the relationship between Christ and the Church, especially in the letters of Paul.

Prophet Isaiah, in today’s first reading, tells us which is the fasting God appreciates: “Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter —when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear, then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard” (Is 58:7-8). God likes and expects from us whatever is taking us towards a true love for all our brothers.

St. John Paul II, under the motto “There is more happiness in giving than there is in receiving” (Acts 20:35); helps us to discover the very same charitable dimension of our fasting, which, from the bottom of our heart, allows us to prepare for Easter Time, in an effort to identify ourselves, more and more, with Christ’s love which took him to die in the Cross for us. “What every Christian ought to do all the time, he ought to do it now more carefully and more devotedly” (Saint Leo the Great, pope).