MARCH 3rd
2013. THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT
Gospel:
Luke 13:1-9
Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini,
broadcast on Vatican Radio
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Don Fabio’s reflection follows
the Gospel reading ...
Gospel Luke: 13:1-9
Some people arrived and told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had
mingled with that of their sacrifices. At this he said to them, 'Do you suppose
these Galileans who suffered like that were greater sinners than any other
Galileans? They were not, I tell you. No; but unless you repent you will all
perish as they did. Or those eighteen on whom the tower at Siloam fell and
killed them? Do you suppose that they were more guilty than all the other
people living in Jerusalem? They were not, I tell you. No; but unless you
repent you will all perish as they did.'
He told this parable: 'A man
had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came looking for fruit on it but
found none. He said to the man who looked after the vineyard, "Look here,
for three years now I have been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and
finding none. Cut it down: why should it be taking up the ground?"
"Sir," the man replied "leave it one more year and give me time
to dig round it and manure it: it may bear fruit next year; if not, then you
can cut it down."'
The
Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord
Jesus Christ
In
the Gospel, Jesus is challenged to explain the mystery of evil and suffering.
Why did those Galileans die in such horrific circumstances in Jerusalem? Why was
that particular group of people crushed by the tower of Siloam? Jesus responds
by ruling out the explanation that
many people would be tempted to entertain privately: namely, that these people
were greater sinners than others! Instead, Jesus exhorts us to respond to this
mystery on a level that goes beyond a
purely rational or cerebral approach to the problem of suffering. The existence
of evil and suffering does not call for a merely rational explanation; it
calls, rather, for personal conversion.
The bewildering events of this world should not simply drive us to seek an intellectual solution to the mystery; it
should drive us to respond to evil and suffering with charity and love. The
fact is that we are encircled by bewildering events and negative facts that
demand radical inner conversion to the Lord. But we are like the fig tree in the
parable that remains unproductive for years. The fig tree does not respond to its
fertile environment, failing to bear fruit. We too fail to enter into dialogue
with the events of our lives that ought to drive us towards conversion and relationship
with God. We complain about the negative facts of our lives, looking for
someone to blame, searching for reasons, lamenting the lack of “suitable” reasons.
But these facts are calling for a response that is not on the level of reasons
but on the level of the entire person.
The full translation of Don Fabio’s reflection now follows . . .
Jesus is challenged to explain
the existence of suffering in the world
In the liturgy this Sunday, the Church
courageously places before us the difficult and disturbing text at the
beginning of Chapter Thirteen of Luke’s Gospel. Jesus is challenged to make
sense of bewildering historical events in which the lives of the innocent are
cruelly taken. Pilate had slaughtered some Galileans, causing their blood to be
mixed with the very sacrifices that they had offered to the Lord. For a Jew,
blood constitutes life, and to mix human blood with the blood of animals
offered for sacrifice is a horrific way to die. Jesus himself mentions another
incomprehensible tragedy: the collapse of the tower of Siloam on eighteen
people. How are these terrible facts to be explained? One is a tragedy brought
on by human hands: the action of a tyrant that leads to human suffering. The
other is a catastrophic accident, and it is not clear who or what is
responsible for the disaster.
Jesus challenges us to be
converted in the face of these bewildering events
Jesus responds to these baffling questions
by saying something that at first appears very strange: “Do you suppose that
those Galileans that suffered were greater sinners than other Galileans? They
were not, I tell you. But unless you convert, you will all perish as they did”.
Jesus repeats the same sentiments with regard to those who died under the tower
of Siloam. In other words, we all die
in the same manner if we die without being converted. When we are confronted by
tragedies of this sort, the correct response is not to look for scapegoats or reasons for these events, but to be
converted. That is not to say that
everyone who fails to be converted will die in a violent manner. What he is
saying is that there is something that is more powerful, more important, and
more urgent than any of these historical facts. When these events occur, what
are we being challenged to do? To run? To hide? To find new and better ways of
protecting ourselves? No! In order to live a dignified life that transcends all
of these terrible events, it is essential that we enter into a process called conversion.
Conversion means to go beyond a
rational approach to disasters such as these and instead respond to them in a
relational way. It involves entering into relationship with God
Jesus mentions conversion twice in this
passage, and then tells the parable of the fig tree. For three years the tree
fails to bear fruit and risks being cut down, but the caretaker of the vineyard
insists on nurturing it for one more year in an almost excessive way to see if it
might finally bear fruit. What exactly is this conversion that Jesus insists we
must engage in? Some people think of conversion as a change of one’s religion,
but this sort of global and total conversion is a relatively rare event. In
Latin, “conversion” means “to change direction”, whilst in Hebrew the verb
means “to return to the original point of departure”. The best translation of
the Hebrew term is precisely this: to return to the truth; to go back to the
original and authentic starting point of everything. The Gospel of Luke was
originally written in Greek, so we must also pay attention to the Greek
significance of the term. The Greek word for conversion is metanoia, which means “to go beyond what I now think”. Nous for the Greeks was the rational
centre of the person, and meta means
to go beyond what I currently or habitually think and arrive at a new way of
thinking. But what does conversion
actually mean in practical terms? It means that I must continually return to the
ultimate origin of everything. When I am confronted by facts that I cannot make
sense of with my rational capacities, the fundamental thing is to go beyond
merely thinking and return to the truth, return to God, and be changed within.
The Church exists in a constant state of conversion. Some religious orders take
vows of conversion; in other words they vow to live in a constant state of positive
transformation. Life for all of us must involve constant change, assimilation.
The marvellous thing about human nature is our capacity to live in a state of
constant dialogue with our surroundings. We must enter into dialogue with the things
that happen to us and allow ourselves to be changed.
The existence of evil is linked
to the complete freewill that God has given us. It is not within our
intellectual powers to make sense of how God can give us the freedom to commit
such evil
The people go to Jesus and ask him to make
intellectual sense of tragic events. His response is, “In the face of these
events, be changed! Grow! When confronted by facts like these, turn radically
to God!” If we seek to make sense of these events using only our powers of
reason, then we find ourselves in difficulty. When disaster strikes, we find
ourselves bewildered and dismayed. We cannot understand the reality of the
freewill that God has given us, a freewill that is so complete that it even
permits us to carry out evil. If we had the power, we would take everyone’s
freedom away and make a perfect world in which no misdemeanours were possible.
But such a world would be more like a videogame than reality. It would lack the
substance and identity of the world that we know.
When disaster strikes, my
response should not be “Why?” but “How can I respond?”
When confronted by the existence of
suffering and evil, our rational faculties find themselves at the limit of
their capabilities. Jesus exhorts us to respond to these facts with conversion.
He tells us that we cannot make sense of them with our nous – the power of the mind – but with metanoia, the process of going beyond a purely cerebral way of
dealing with things. This “going beyond” involves entering into relationship
with God. If I am confronted by a tragic fact that I cannot make sense of, then
instead of asking “What is the meaning of this disaster?” I must ask “How
should I change in the face of this disaster?” An earthquake is a cataclysmic
event that brings much human suffering. When an earthquake strikes, my priority
must not be to ask how God has permitted such a thing to happen. Instead I must
do whatever is in my power to love and help the victims of the disaster and in
this way manifest the beauty and glory of God. In the face of these negative
facts of history and nature, we must move closer to our neighbour and love him
or her more radically. There is a strange correspondence between the realities
of suffering and evil, and the acts of love which abound in the face of these
negative realities.
Once again, if we ask the
question, “Why do these terrible things happen in life?” then we are
confronting our mental faculties with a question that they alone do not have
the capacity to deal with. When clerics try to make sense of evil and
suffering, they always end up saying things that do not convince anybody.
Instead, we must respond to these facts with the totality of our persons, asking ourselves, “What is this terrible
tragedy asking me to become? How
should I change in response to this
tragic event?”
The fig tree was unproductive for
three years. We too are unproductive in the face of facts and events that
should challenge us to convert
The story of the fig tree tells of this
effort to nurture the tree one last time so that it might bear fruit. There is
something over-the- top about this attempt to obtain a yield from a tree that
hasn’t produced anything for three years. The owner wants to cut it down, but
the caretaker insists on doing something that no-one in reality would do for a
fig tree that has ceased to be productive. Jesus is giving us another opportunity,
another year, another period of time to enter the process of transformation
that is conversion. But if we have not understood what life itself is asking of
us, then we are heading towards a loss, towards a “cutting down”, towards a
squandering of the life that has been given to us. Life is wasted if we do not
allow ourselves to be changed by the events that confront us. Many of us go
through life looking for somebody or something to blame for the negative
realities that confront us every day. If something disastrous happens, we
demand to know who is responsible. But the correct behaviour in the face of
negative events is to respond to them
on a personal level, entering into relationship with God, allowing ourselves to
be changed. If a grave event occurs, then the best of ourselves must emerge in response;
we must begin to bear fruit in the very face of that event.
