The readings today speak about fasting.
But they are not primarily about food. They are about the heart.

Through Isaiah, God speaks with sharpness:

“Cry aloud; do not hold back… declare to my people their transgression.”

God is addressing a people who are religious but not converted.

They fast.
They pray.
They seek God daily.

“Why have we fasted, and you see it not?
Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?”

They think God is ignoring them. In fact, God is exposing them.

“Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure,
and oppress all your workers.”

Their fasting has not changed how they live.
It has not reordered their loves.
It has not healed their relationships.

So God asks the decisive question:

Is fasting just a ritual, or is it conversion?

God then defines the fast He desires:

“Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness…
to let the oppressed go free…
to share your bread with the hungry…
to bring the homeless poor into your house?”

This is not a rejection of fasting.
It is a rescue of fasting from hypocrisy.

True fasting is not only about what is removed from the mouth.
It is about what is removed from the heart.

Cruelty.
Indifference.
Self-interest.

A fast that leaves injustice untouched is not a fast God receives.

And God makes a promise:

“Then shall your light break forth like the dawn…
then you shall call, and the Lord will answer.”

Conversion restores communion.

This prepares us for the Gospel.

The disciples of John come to Jesus and ask:

“Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?”

It is a reasonable question. Fasting was a known religious practice.

Jesus does not reject fasting. He places it in its proper time.

“Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?”

Jesus is identifying himself.

He is the bridegroom.
The one long awaited.
The one who brings the kingdom.

While he is present,
this is not a time of mourning.
It is a time of joy.

But then he adds: “The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.”

Jesus links fasting not to custom but to loss.

Fasting belongs to longing.

It belongs to the time
when Christ is no longer visible,
when the Church lives by faith and not by sight.

That is our time.

We fast because we await the Bridegroom.

We fast because the world is not yet healed.

We fast because our hearts are still divided.

So Isaiah and Jesus together teach us this:

Fasting without justice is empty.
Fasting without love is empty.
Fasting without longing is pretence.

The danger is to treat Lent as religious activity instead of spiritual surgery.

To give up food but not give up pride.
To abstain from meat but not from resentment.
To skip dessert but keep injustice.

God says: that is not the fast I choose.

The fast God chooses loosens bonds.

It frees. It feeds. It restores communion.

And Jesus shows us why.

The Bridegroom has come. And he will be taken away.

The cross is already in view.

Lent is shaped by that absence.

We fast
not to prove discipline,
but to sharpen desire.

Not to impress God,
but to expose what still rules us.

Not to display holiness,
but to make room for mercy.

This is why fasting is never alone.

It belongs with prayer and almsgiving.

Prayer turns us toward God.
Almsgiving turns us toward others.
Fasting turns us away from ourselves.

Isaiah promises: “Then your light shall rise in the darkness.”

Not when you perform rituals.
But when you let God re-order your life.

And Jesus reminds us: The Bridegroom will return.

Fasting is not permanent. It points forward.

It teaches the body what the soul must learn:

That life does not come from what we consume, but from whom we await.

So the question today is not: What are we giving up?

It is:

What is being loosened?
What is being healed?
What is being returned to God?

This is the fast God chooses.

And this is the longing
Christ himself awakens
in those who follow him.