Third Sunday of Lent

What is the challenge for us in today’s Gospel on this Third Sunday of Lent?     How can our spirits be nourished by this life-giving word?

By God’s good grace we’ve all lived to see another Lent and I believe today’s passage from Luke raises  three  issues:    

• God’s gift to us of time 
• Our human capacity for change and growth
• God’s infinite patience and loving care for each of us

These days we’re all too familiar with stories of sudden death – be it from a terrorist bomb or a tsunami.  Who can forget the victims of Haiti or Chile?  How many have asked ‘Why do bad things happen to innocent people’?

Jesus was aware of the commonly held belief in his day that “bad things happened to bad people”.  He insisted that the Galileans slaughtered at Pilate’s orders and the eighteen killed by the falling tower of Siloam were not to be judged as more guilty or more sinful than anyone else.   Rather, he strongly warned his listeners:   “I tell you, if you do not repent you will all perish as they did”.  Conversion of heart, while we have time, is more important than avoiding sudden death.

When Jesus spoke to the people he knew they had the capacity to change and grow.   He challenged them to repentance and a new way of thinking and living.   He knows we too, have the capacity to repent, to change the way we relate to God and to others.  According to Carl Jung “we cannot change anything until we accept it”. 

God is infinitely patient with us.  In today’s parable of the fig tree, the gardener is insistent that the fig tree should be given another chance, another year of life so careful cultivation might produce the long awaited fruit.  This tree, unproductive for three years, has been given a reprieve – time is on its side once more, and now it must become fruitful or be destroyed. 

Discipleship is challenging and change is never easy.   As Martin Luther King Jr said “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle”.  No struggle will defeat us if we allow the Lord to take charge of our lives, for the Lord believes in us more than we believe in ourselves.    We have been given time, the capacity for a deeper conversion and the belief that our God is ever  patient and forgiving.

“The Lord is kind and merciful”.

Denise Sullivan OP