Welcoming & Embracing the Stranger: Lenten Reflections with the Artwork of James Tissot

February 20, 2026 - Friday after Ash Wednesday

Imagine attending a birthday party while sporting a long face. Or imagine going to the wake and laughing up a storm. Inappropriate! There is a season for everything under the sun, a time to laugh and a time to weep, a time to dance and a time to mourn. Accordingly, Jesus taught appreciation for seasons and times. When some wanted his disciples to fast, he observed that this would be as inappropriate as people mourning at a wedding. Why a wedding? Because he was God, Israel’s Bridegroom, in his disciples’ midst, and the wedding party was on! Yet Jesus went on to add, “The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.” When Jesus no longer shared food with his disciples, they should fast, as people might in a time of mourning, to remember him who had once filled their lives with the utter fullness of God. 

Seated at the right hand of God, Jesus is not now present to us in the visible and tangible way he once was to his original disciples. In this time, we cannot share food and drink with him and because of him at the same table. But that party is coming! It will be here when having subjected all things to God’s loving will, Jesus will return to host the eternal wedding banquet of the Kingdom. We are, of course, given a taste of that future banquet in the Eucharist. Yet this heavenly manna may not be so readily appreciated by us because our lives are overstuffed by so many other good things. Hence, we need to make room or space. Fasting is needed. If we would only deprive ourselves of a little food, our physical hunger may just cause us to remember him who is our fullness. 

Jesus is our fullness! Someday, yes! But even now! In the Eucharist, in the Word, in “the other” who is Jesus in disguise. If only we would fast! If only we would make room in our overfull lives, if only we would welcome and care for the stranger, the hurting, and the poor, we might find ourselves already in the company of Jesus, at the banquet of the Bridegroom.  

Show gracious favor, O Lord, we pray, to the works of penance we have begun, that we may have strength to accomplish with sincerity the bodily observances we undertake. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. (Roman Missal)

Rev. Msgr. C. Anthony Ziccardi, Coordinator for Undergraduate Admissions and Retention and Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies

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