February 28^th 2016.  Third Sunday of Lent

GOSPEL: Luke 13:1-9

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading ...

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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

Kieran’s summary . . . In the Gospel, Jesus is asked to make sense of an incident in which people are tragically killed. Jesus’ reply is a little strange. First of all he says that these people didn’t die because of their bad behaviour, but then he goes on to say that all of us will die in a similar way if we don’t convert! What can Jesus mean? In order to understand him we must take a different perspective on suffering. The people who questioned Jesus were asking the wrong question. The issue is not whether suffering is brought on by living a bad life. Jesus is not interested at all in apportioning blame. Suffering, rather - whether it is our own or that of someone else - is a call to mission. Mother Teresa heard the cry of the poor man, “I thirst!” and she realised that she was being called to serve Jesus. When we hear of horrific deaths or the plight of others, then we must be stirred into action. Our own suffering and the suffering of others can become the basis of a new way looking at things. They can help us to leave the place where we are trapped and go to serve others. Lent is not a time for arid spiritualism, or sterile moral perfection. When Jesus says, “Unless you convert, you will die in the same way”, he does not mean that a horrific death is the punishment that awaits for not converting. Rather, he means that if we are not converted to living a life of love and service to others, then we will die as the people in the tragic incidents died – without having produced the fruit that issues from responding to God’s call to love. Then Jesus tells the parable of a fig tree that produces no fruit. The owner wants to cut it down, but the labourer asks that it be given one more chance. Jesus is the labourer in the vineyard that wants to give us the chance to produce fruit. We have produced nothing yet, because we have not responded to the call to love. But he dies on the cross, gives us his body and blood, so that we will be nurtured to produce fruit for others.

Jesus is presented with a difficult question and he comes up with a surprising answer.

The Gospel this Sunday is very serious. Jesus is presented with the story of the occasion when Pilate had sought to teach the people of Jerusalem a lesson regarding the power of Rome. He had killed a number of Galileans at the Temple, and their blood had become mixed with that of the sacrifices. This was a horrific event from the Hebrew perspective.  For them, blood is the principle of life, and to mix one’s blood with that of animals is an act of profanity on a grand scale. Jesus is asked to make sense of these events and he responds in a very surprising way. He says, “Do you think these Galileans were more guilty than anyone else? Did they deserve to die in this way because of their previous bad behaviour? No, I tell you. And if you do not convert, each one of you will die in the same way”. Then Jesus goes on to mention a number of people who died when a tower fell on them, asking the same question. ‘Did they die like this because of something they had done? No, and if you do not change you will meet a similar end”. He goes on to recount a parable that seems to be disconnected from these comments, but it is not. In the parable, an owner wishes to cut down a fig tree because it has not produced fruit for a number of years. But the labourer asks that the tree be given one last chance to produce the goods. What does this have to do with the discourse about the people who died in a horrible fashion?

Moses had fled from the suffering of his people. Now he encounters God who tells him that his mission is to relieve the suffering of his people. 

In the first reading we read nothing less than the account of the revelation to Moses of the name of God. Moses is given his mission in this passage and he meets God for the first time. Earlier, the book of Exodus recounts how Moses had grown up in the court of the Pharaoh. Then, seeing the terrible conditions of his brethren, the Israelites, he had killed an Egyptian. This caused him to flee from Egypt and he ended up tending sheep for many years for a family who gave him shelter. He married into this family and established a life for himself, remaining a refugee, an outsider, but distant from the terrible conditions of his brethren that had once scandalized him. Evidently, this profound material from Exodus cannot be treated properly in a short reflection of this sort. What is of interest to us is the fact that Moses had fled from the miserable conditions of his people. He had tried to act against the human suffering that he witnessed, but he had not achieved anything and decided to flee. Now he meets God and is given to understand that the same suffering he had fled from has become his mission.

We will all perish like those who were killed by Pilate, without having discovered that the secret of life is to move out from oneself and learn how to love as Jesus did.

Now let us return to the Gospel. Jesus is telling us that event in which the people were killed by Pilate, and the incident in which people were crushed under a tower, are both calls to mission. The issue is not the question of who is guilty, who deserves to suffer and die. The issue is that my neighbour is suffering and I am called to action. The plight of others, their desperate need, is my mission. In this time of Lent, we are not called to an arid spiritualism, or a sterile perfection. We are called to be prompted by our encounter with the eternal, with the extraordinary of God, to reconsider the suffering that we have experienced around us and which has entered into our hearts. This ought to lead to our conversion. “If you do not convert, you will die in the same way”. In other words, we will perish in the same way without having found the meaning of existence, which is to learn how to love. Jesus is not interested in scolding us, or in punishing us in a vengeful way. In this parable he wishes, simply, to call us to love. People can be weighed down by suffering, but it remains there in a sterile way unless it becomes mission. Our own suffering and the suffering of others can become the basis of a new way looking at things. They can help us to leave the place where we are trapped and go to serve the people. Moses, following his encounter with God, becomes the one who will lead the people out of their affliction. He had worked for years as a shepherd in preparation for the time when he would become the shepherd of the people of God.

We are called to be the fig tree that produces a harvest. Up to now we have produced nothing, but Jesus is the merciful labourer who gives his life that we may have another chance to be productive

In the same way, these stories of suffering and misery that surround us are ways in which God calls us. Think of the plea for help that Mother Teresa of Calcutta heard from the poor man who cried, “I am thirsty”. She understood that this was a cry from Our Lord himself. How often the missions of great saints take their starting points from the plight of the suffering that is finally understood to have a priority over everything else. We hear so many stories of human suffering. How often do they become the impulse for real change in our lives, for prayer, for action, for being in the presence of God with these brothers and sisters who are suffering? The terrible stories we hear on the news can remain just news or a call to mission. What Jesus is revealing to us this Sunday is that they are a call from God. This fig tree may not have produced fruit up to now. And the chances it has to produce fruit may soon be exhausted. Will this fig tree ever be productive? There is mercy in the labourer who wishes to tend the tree and give it another chance. There is mercy above all in Jesus who gives his life, his blood, his sacraments, for us so that we will be given another chance to respond. And we become ourselves only when we produce fruit, become mature, provide nutrition for others. All of us are called to bring forth this harvest.