Cycle C - Year II:  

20 March 2022: Third Sunday of Lent 

(Liturgical Color: Violet)

Readings:

First Reading:        Exodus 3:1-8, 13-15

Second Reading:   1 Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12

Gospel:  Please Read  Luke 13:1-9 

A call to conversion and repentance!

When tragedy or natural calamity strikes, can we attribute them as God's punishment?  When we are unable to comprehend misfortunes, sometimes we relate them to divine intervention a punishment for our sins. But were the victims of tragedy more sinful than others to deserve God's wrath?

This Sunday's Gospel narrative speaks of misfortune that befell the Galilean pilgrims and the victims of the fall of the tower of Siloam. People asked our Lord if this was God's punishment for their sins? Jesus in response tells them who God really is in a story about a vineyard owner, a fig tree and a gardener.

Now, our Lord categorically refuses to attribute their misfortune to God, or to His sense of justice. Because God does only good; He offers us only life.

So today's Gospel gives a wonderful image of God as the gardener, and a patient gardener. God will not toss us aside immediately if we are not bearing fruit. God will fertilize us, nurture us, and pull all the weeds that are growing within and around us. But we have to allow God to be our gardener.

So that if we ask God to do so, He will gift and grace us as we work together with God to uproot the weeds from our lives. We have to trust our Divine Gardener's timing. Because our Lord never tires of coming to look for the good fruit in our lives.

Our God is a very patient God who wants us back to His kingdom. In the Gospel incident, Jesus takes the opportunity to explain God's mercy and sense of justice. He uses the parable of the fig tree that had not borne fruits for the past three years but was allowed still to remain for another year so that it might produce a harvest.

The metaphor for the fig tree is meant to teach us practical lessons about the time each of us is given in this life for conversion. Let us reflect on these lessons.

First lesson: The farmer wanted to cut down the fig tree because it had not borne fruits and only exhausted the soil. Those who only take and don't give something in return eventually collapse upon themselves and die.  The same can be true for us when we do not bear fruit for the kingdom of God.  Each of us is indebted  to God for our lives, but each of us has the responsibility to leave this world better than when we found it when we depart for the next life.  Thus we must produce fruits of good deeds.

Second lesson: God is always giving us another chance to conversion and change of heart. That is why each day is a gift from God. We can make use of it to advance God's kingdom, or we can use only for our own selfish purposes.  Our merciful God beckons us always to repentance because His generosity is immense.

Final lesson, which certainly is not the last: While God's generosity is immense, it is not infinite. One day He will call us for an accounting of our lives.  At a certain point, our chances to repent are exhausted and each of us will have to answer for the way we live our lives here on earth. It is not as if God shuts us out. Rather,  we are responsible for our own downfall should we reject God's invitation to repent with contrite heart.  Remember that sin is our greatest misfortune, and so we must turn away from it. It is our choice to repent or persist in sinful ways.

The Lenten season is a time to answer the urgent call for a change of heart.  May each of us sense the urgency of conversion that the parable o the fig tree is teaching us.  Let us put to life its lessons and work hard to bear fruits for God's kingdom, each according to our own state of life and capacity. Let us always remember that while we live in God's mercy in this life, we will live under His justice in the next.

A blessed Sunday to us all. And thank you for a moment with God.

Ad Jesum per Mariam!