MARCH 3^rd 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.