A Call to Repentance

Today's Reflections

                                                                          

                                                                        

 

A Call to Repentance

Lk 13:1-9

¹[One time,] some people who were present [in the crowd] told [Jesus] about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices. ²He said to them in reply, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were greater sinners than all other Galileans? ³By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did! ⁴Or those eighteen people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem? ⁵By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!”

⁶And he told them this parable: “There once was a person who had a fig tree planted in his orchard, and when he came in search of fruit on it but found none, ⁷he said to the gardener, ‘For three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fig tree but have found none. [So] cut it down. Why should it exhaust the soil?’ ⁸He said to him in reply, ‘Sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; ⁹it may bear fruit in the future. If not you can cut it down.’ ”

GREATER SINNERS. People sometimes see calamities—flash floods, landslides, tsunamis, and earthquakes—as God’s punishment to sinners. We cannot take this to be true because among the victims of calamities are children and innocent people. Natural calamities make no distinctions between sinners and saints.

In the Gospel, Jesus says that the 18 killed at Siloam and the Galileans by Pilate were not the worst of sinners. But he adds, “If you do not repent, you will all perish” (v 3). To perish here refers not to physical death, for everybody will surely die, whether by old age, sickness or accident. It means to be damned or condemned to eternal punishment.

In the parable, the orchard owner instructs the gardener to cut down the fruitless fig tree, for it was occupying the ground uselessly. The gardener asks that the tree be given one more chance to deliver the expected fruits.

The fig tree represents us. We are planted to bear fruits of good deeds.

“Have mercy on me, God, in your goodness;

in your abundant compassion blot out my offense”

(Ps 51:3).