Third Sunday of Lent
C 2025
The Scriptures are a tale of two trees: the tree that Moses encountered as the burning
bush that is on fire but is not consumed, and in the Gospel the parable of the
barren fig tree that yields no fruit.
In the Gospel parable, an orchard owner orders his gardener
to chop down a sadly unproductive fig tree. The gardener advises him to leave
it one more year and see if, with some tending, it will bear fruit. Give it one
more chance.
Who does the heartless orchard owner represent? We always
assume that it is God. But, on the
contrary, Jesus is not the orchard owner but the
gardener, asking mercy for the disobedient fig tree. Each one of us
is that fig tree in the parable. We are
the recipients of the mercy of Jesus.
After three years of waiting, the owner
of the vineyard was ready to give up on the tree. Things were not on schedule.
It’s time to bail out and cut the tree down. The gardener begs the owner to be
patient. Things will turn around. Give it one more year. I will dig around it
and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not,
you can cut it down.
So too, our growth doesn’t always happen on schedule. In the parable, the
gardener knows an extremely important piece of wisdom about life. Everything in
life doesn’t run according to schedule. Plain and Simple. No one disagrees with
this truth, but it is easy to forget in given situations.
Isn’t it true we have been struggling with our same life
issues over many years? Our discipleship
of the Lord Jesus is on our unique schedule and that schedule is more than a
bit messy.
The Gospel parable of the fig tree is a story about not giving up on ourselves
and not giving up on the Church. It is about growing from the experiences of
life. It is about failures that make us grow.
Who of us can’t identify with this parable?
Who of us can possibly claim that we have not at times been that barren fig
tree – the one who disappointed everyone’s else’s expectations, the slow
learner in a sea of confusion, the one who took years to see through a thing
and change it, the latecomer to responsibility and maturity, one who has
already come up short in our Lenten resolves, the one who is still carrying a
grudge that should have been let go of long ago, the one who hasn’t walked the
talk of Gospel forgiveness.
What are the failures in your life that have helped you to
grow? You would think that by this time
in life I would have figured out the right balance between personal prayer and
the various activities and ministries in life; you would think that I would
have the right balance with spending time with family and my commitment to
ministry and the need for relaxation to reenergize myself. You would think that by this time in life I
would be more patient and forgiving. You
would think by this time I would have figured out to keep my golf ball in the
middle of the fairway.
But I, like most of us, are a work in progress and will
always be a work in progress.
Today’s Gospel parable challenges us to reflect on patience
and forgiveness – probably a need for many of us. First, we have to have patience and
forgiveness with ourselves. We need to
allow ourselves the invitation to consider that our failures will help us
grow. We need to allow ourselves to
experience God’s unending love for us even though we are not always worthy of
God’s love.
Further, we need to share this love and forgiveness with
others. Among our families and friends,
there may be someone we have given up on.
The divide is too wide. They have
continually failed to meet our expectations.
The grudge may be permanent, or the injury may have cut so deeply, that
amputation seems to be the only resolution.
The Gospel parable calls us to be nonjudgmental. I am to accept others for where they are at
this time in their lives. Each of us
“blooms or bears fruit” in his or her own time, some early, some later on
in life. The fig tree inspires us to
patience.
Listen again to the Gospel parable, although the fruitless
tree had yielded nothing in three years, the gardener implores: “Sir, leave it
for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize
it: it may bear fruit in the future.”
The Gospel provides new hope and invites us to always try
again. Forgive the past and look to the
future.
In spite of the whole history of humankind to the contrary,
we still think life should be painless. We
still have a hard accepting that most growth, most progress, most good things
in life come out of some pain.
May our two mantras today be: May our failures help to grow. Secondly, forgive the past and look to the future.
Thankfully the God of today’s Gospel parable and the God of the burning bush
doesn’t give up on us. God is a God of second and third chances. God’s burning
bush of love is within us. Jesus the patient gardener calls us to bear fruit.
Yes, this Lenten season is about conversion. It is about growing in our
relationship with God. It is about repentance and bearing fruit that enables us
to grow more fully into a Gospel way of living.
Some of us in the spiritual journey have a spiritual companion or a soul
friend, a trusted person with whom we can share the secrets of our hearts. What
a gift to have that kind of a friend. But in a deeper sense, life itself is our
best spiritual director. In our lives, we are standing on holy ground. What
makes that ground holy? God is present in the burning bush of his love that is
within us, and God is present to us in the burning bushes of the circumstances
of our lives. Even when we seem like the barren fig tree, when we are
overwhelmed by the struggles, be assured that Jesus, the patient gardener goes
with us and invites us to take the risk of being vulnerable, in trusting that
his love for us is unending. May we have the grace of spiritual sightedness to
recognize the holy ground of God’s love on which we are standing?
Have a blessed day.