What does this text give us now, when Christ has already been crucified and therefore, by the logic of this text, has already been taken away? Is it only testimony in favor of the correctness of our established custom of fasting, or something more? What does that period mean for us, when the disciples "did not fast," a period in which we would appear to have no part? Did the Lord not illumine all the ages that followed by His presence on earth? Is there really some essential difference between us and those who saw Him in the flesh? After all, we call ourselves His disciples, as they were. Then what is the difference? We are probably mistaken when it feels as if we have grasped the logic of the Gospel text, because even if we take only the logical dimension of one passage or another, it is very complex, fractal, and multidimensional.

In A. K. Tolstoy's poem "John of Damascus" there are these words: "Why was I not born in that time, / When among us, in the flesh, / Bearing the painful burden, / He walked life's road! / Why can I not bear, / O my Lord, Your chains, / Suffer with Your suffering, / And take Your cross upon my shoulders..." What we actually grieve over is not the joy of sitting at the same table with Him, higher than which there may be nothing, but rather the fact that I was not given the chance to share His pain... But is that fully true? Let us remember: "as you did it to one of the least of these My brothers, you did it to Me" (Matt 25:40). We have not been deprived of the happiness of taking up His cross. That means we have not been deprived of the joy of being with Him either.

Yes, but do we still need fasting? We do, because this shared presence is hidden; yet there are moments in the church year when fasting is no longer important: Easter. Do you remember the Paschal homily of St. John Chrysostom: "Therefore enter all of you into the joy of our Lord; first and second, receive your reward; rich and poor, rejoice together; sober and careless, honor this day; you who fasted and you who did not fast, rejoice today. The table is richly laden; enjoy it, all of you." It is precisely at this moment that the meaning of today's passage is revealed with special force as something alive here and now.

Why does the evangelist Mark, writing down for Romans the content of the apostle Peter's preaching, transmit this conversation of Christ with the Pharisees? And why did Peter tell about it? Clearly, the point is that the subject of the discussion is characteristic not only of the Pharisees, but belongs to the religious consciousness of humanity as a whole.

The point is that in any spirituality, besides God's revelation, which may in fact be absent, for example in some cannibalistic orgiastic cults, there is a human element. First, it includes what we did not hear clearly in Revelation or were unable to understand in it and therefore fill in by our own reasoning. And the Almighty said that His ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts. An example is the petty vindictiveness that is often attributed to the Deity. Second, in any spirituality, including biblical spirituality, both Old Testament and New Testament, there is what God determines in order to help us grow, in the apostle's words, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. This includes various means of spiritual life, as well as a noticeable share of ritual practice.

But a human being is inclined to deify these human components of religion. Therefore Christ's words, "No one pours new wine into old wineskins..." in today's Gospel reading are not so much a rebuke to the Pharisees as a warning to us when we lack the courage to worship in spirit and truth.

If we listen carefully to Christ's words, it becomes clear that the new wine of the New Covenant differs in principle from the old wine of the Old Covenant: the form of worship of Christ's disciples is determined by the fact that the whole fullness of the Godhead has been revealed to us bodily.

Using a modern example, one can put it this way. A person who pours new wine into old wineskins, to whom shall we compare him? He is like a driver who carefully watches the speedometer, the fuel and temperature gauges, and listens to the engine. But he is not looking at the road...

The traditional Yahwist, and later Jewish, understanding of sin and its consequences was fairly strict, even severe. One could be cleansed only from a sin committed unintentionally - from weakness, for example, from ignorance or carelessness. Cleansing was not identical with repentance. Repentance meant that a person recognized sin as such, precisely as sin, turned to God, felt remorse, and inwardly renounced what had been done. It was understood that God in any case forgives the one who sincerely repents, but forgiveness did not yet mean cleansing. Cleansing meant the possibility of being freed from the consequences of the sin that had been committed. If no cleansing took place, those consequences continued to weigh on a person, hindering normal communion with God and depriving the person of the prospect of entering the Kingdom of the Messiah, or, as it was also called in those days, the Kingdom of the age to come.

Such strictness was not, of course, the result of some special vindictiveness or formalism among believers. It only reflected the realities of the fallen world with the overpowering rule of evil and sin. Once a person had voluntarily handed himself over to the power of sin, he later found himself powerless before it; he could no longer break free from that power. Tax collectors, that is, collectors of tribute who worked for the Roman administration, were considered precisely voluntary sinners. No one had forced them to do what they were doing, and from the very beginning they knew what they were undertaking. They also knew that there would be no road back for them, since it was impossible to be cleansed from the consequences of a consciously committed sin.

One can imagine what these people must have felt when they learned that they too had the possibility of becoming part of the people of God again, of being cleansed and receiving a chance to begin everything with a clean slate. Many of them had no doubt later repented and regretted the choice they had once made, but there was nowhere for them to go. And then suddenly there appears the One who promises the possibility of what had previously been impossible. No wonder the tax collectors and others of the same sort, people who had once consciously sinned and had now repented, follow Jesus: He is their only hope.

For the devout Pharisees, however, proud of their religious purity, this turn of events is more a cause for irritation than for joy. What meaning do all their efforts to keep themselves pure have now, if those who did nothing of the kind are being given the same possibilities they have? The first reaction of religious consciousness to this situation is: we tried in vain; all our efforts have turned out to be useless.

Jesus speaks directly: He came to call to repentance those to whom it had previously been closed, real sinners and not formally righteous people. What matters to Him is to save everyone who can be saved, not to flatter the religious vanity of those who take pride in their imagined righteousness.