Hebrews 5:1-10 / Mark 2:18-22
New ways of doing things are interesting and exciting. From cooking with firewood to gas cooking or electric cooking is really a leap of a change.
Yet new ways are not always immediately understood and accepted, even though they may be more effective and productive.
In fact, new ways are often viewed with suspicion and grilled with questions and they will be heavily criticised when a small fault happens.
The way of Jesus in proclaiming the Good News of God's love was certainly unconventional and revolutionary, but it also irked the other religious groups of His time like the scribes and Pharisees.
While the religious attitude at that time was concerned with religious purity and keeping the rituals, Jesus came along and feasted with the sinners and those considered impure.
Jesus made God's love incarnate - people, especially the sinners, could see, hear, touch and feel the love of God, and they were told that God loves them all, sinners or not.
As how the 1st reading described that a high priest is taken out of mankind and is appointed to act for men in their relations with God, so that he can sympathise with those who are ignorant or uncertain.
So Jesus, the Son of God, the high priest of God, feasted with all alike to celebrated God's love for them and to lead them back to God.
Although He was Son and high priest, He learnt to obey through suffering and He became for all who obey Him the source of eternal salvation.
So fasting and penance are still ways to express our love for God; but in Jesus, the way of obedience brings about a deeper meaning to fasting and doing penance.
The way of obedience is not just a new way; it is the way of Jesus who is THE WAY.