3rd Sunday of Lent 2025 (C) - Burning Bush and the Fig Tree

 

Each Sunday of Lent, our first readings lead us to consider the different stages of salvation history. Last week, remember we read from the book of Genesis of God making a covenant with Abraham. And God foretold how Abraham’s descendants would go down to Egypt, and there they would become numerous, until God led them out of Egypt into the Land of Canaan, the promised land.

This week’s first reading takes places about 400-450 years later, and it has come to pass jut as God said it would: Abraham’s decedents had indeed become very numerous in Egypt, so much so that Pharoah begins killing off the little boys. Under the tyranny of Pharoah God’s people cried out for deliverance. And so, our first reading today describes Moses receiving this task from God to lead the descendants of Abraham out of slavery.

Now Moses, wasn’t a political leader or a soldier, rather he had occupation of a shepherd, an occupation so despised by the Egyptians that Egyptians would not even eat with such men. In the midst of Moses’ lowly existence, God reveals himself to Moses and gives Moses this monumental task.

And, initially, as you might expect, Moses is reluctant and hesitant. He doesn’t speak well, he’s just a shepherd, he has the respect of neither Egyptian or Israelite. But what fills Moses with confidence is when God reveals his name. From the burning bush, God reveals himself to Moses: “I am who am” in other words, “I am the One truly existent One.” The one true God is with you Moses, don’t be afraid of Egypt, don’t be afraid of your own limitations. I AM with you.

Have any of you ever had a burning bush moment? Where either at mass, or in quiet prayer, or at a retreat, or at a festival of praise, you have an undeniable experience of God’s presence. You know you are in the presence of the Great I AM. And that fills you with confidence? I know many priests who received such a grace, and they became secure in their vocation—confident in their calling—upon experiencing an extraordinary encounter with God.

To be honest, I’m not sure everyone gets those. Yes, all of us are able to encounter God in the sacraments. Jesus Christ is truly present in the Eucharist. He’s present in the proclamation of the Word. But God’s presence, in the sacraments is veiled. We know he is present through faith, but, again, I’m not sure every gets burning bush experiences in this life time. Many of us simply need to walk by faith, not by sight.

But if you have received some sort of Burning Bush experience of God, know that you like Moses have a task to fulfill. That experience isn’t just for you. You have a task to help those who haven’t to believe and to walk in the ways of the Lord. To bear fruit that will last.

So God reveals himself to Moses at the burning bush. Fast forward about 1500 years to our Gospel this weekend. And Jesus tells a parable about a very different type of plant, not a burning bush, but a fig tree.

In the parable, a landowner has planted a fig tree in his orchard, expecting fruit. After three years of disappointment, the landowner decides it should be cut down. Yet, the gardener steps in with compassion and hope, pleading for patience: “Leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; it may bear fruit in the future. If not, you can cut it down.”

This parable was being directed to the religious leaders of the day who claimed to be spokesmen of God. Jesus was critical of them because they were not bearing fruit. They were not helping God’s people strive for authentic holiness and they certainly weren’t helping people believe that God was in their midst in the person of Jesus. So the Lord foretells how they will be cut down, like a barren fig tree, if they don’t start bearing fruit for the kingdom of God.

But, the parable is not only directed to the religious leaders of Jesus’ day of course, the parable is also directed at all of us. We were all made by God to bear spiritual fruit. St. Paul, in his Letter to the Galatians, clearly identifies these fruits as love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. The fruits of our faith hope and love are to be seen in our lives.

But, we don’t always bear the fruit we are supposed to, do we? Our struggle with sin, our laziness, causes us to bear less fruit, or no fruit. Many people, even some baptized Christians are essentially fruitless because they walk the way of the world rather than the way of Christ. Prayer has been replaced with entertainment, fasting has been replaced with indulgence and decadence. Almsgiving has been replaced with seeking happiness in material things. Repentance has been replaced with convincing themselves that they don’t need God or the Church to be good people or go to heaven.

Now, the image of the gardener in the parable reminds us that God is very patient with us. In his mercy, God gives us many opportunities to repent and believe in the Gospel.

However, The message of the parable is clear: the fig tree is not given infinite time. The patient gardner says, “we’re going to try to cultivate the ground, fertilize the tree, but if it doesn’t bear fruit, you can cut it down.”

There is a practical limit to the time that we have been given on this earth to repent and bear fruit, a window of grace. There is an urgency to Jesus’ message. It is not enough simply to go through life with an essentially dead and faithless relationship with Jesus. We are to cooperate with the gardener as best we can—to cultivate our souls—so that we can bear the fruit God desires us to bear.

So again, here is the Lenten call to get serious about prayer, fasting, almsgiving and repentance from sin. This is the cultivation God wants for us in this season.

Like Moses, we are called to move from hesitation to boldness, from complacency to action, trusting that God will help us in the path he has set before us for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

 

34th Week in Ordinary Time 2021 - Friday - Changing of seasons

 
What a jolting contrast in our readings today. From the Old Testament book of the prophet Daniel we have this great vision of the four beast rising from the see.

This vision stands for the four great kingdoms of Daniels time—the Babylonians, medes, persians, and greeks, who opposed and oppressed the Jewish people. And yet those four beast also stand for the kingdoms of the earth that oppose the Church through the ages as well. This vision is frightening, but its also hopeful. For the beasts shall be slain and lose their dominion when the ancient-one of heaven comes and ushers in the kingdom that will last forever

In contrast to the jolting vision from Daniel, is the serene image of the blossoming fig tree in the Gospel. Just as the blossoming of the fig tree indicates a changing of season from spring to summer, so too will there be physical observable signs prior to the Lord’s return. 

Like the quiet and serene blossoming of the fig tree, in less than 48 hours we will pass, almost seamlessly into a new liturgical year, the season of advent, the season of peaceful waiting.

The alarming images in our scriptures these past few days, perhaps remind us that the spiritual life is a serious business, that we do well to ensure that we are on the right side of history, that we are making efforts to remove from our lives anything that is in opposition to the holy will of God.

And yet, also the serene and quiet blooming of the fig tree, reminds us that the full flowering of grace comes about through quiet prayer, hidden acts of charity, daily perseverance, daily waiting, patience and hope.

This last full day of the season of Ordinary Time is a wonderful day to do quiet reflection: what areas of my life need to be handed over more fully to the Lord, what will my advent prayer and charitable works look like. Perhaps there is a virtue-patience, gentleness, temperance, gratefulness, that needs extra effort this advent. 

Though Advent unfolds in the cold of winter, it is meant to be a spiritual summer in which we prepare assiduously for the Lord through repentance, penance, prayer, charity, and the cultivation of virtue.

In the hours we have before Advent, prepare to prepare, come up with a spiritual plan for your Advent: your spiritual reading, spiritual penance, a list of the good works you hope to engage in, to allow the Gospel to bear fruit in your lives, fruit that will last for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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Lord, sanctify your bishops and priests, and grant them courage to preach the Gospel in its fullness.

Make the lives of parents examples of faith to inspire their children to seek first your heavenly kingdom. 

Bring all those who have fallen away back to the sacraments, help them to repent of their sins and desire the life that can only come from you.

That the upcoming season of Advent may be a season of spiritual renewal for the Church.

Bring comfort to the sick and suffering, charity and care to the destitute and down-trodden, be present through your church to the miserable. 

Welcome into your kingdom all the faithful departed, those whose names are written in our parish necrology, all clergy and religious, and X for whom this mass is offered.

O God, you know that our life in this present age is subject to suffering and need, hear the prayers of those who cry to you and receive the prayers of those who believe in you. Through Christ our Lord.

8th Week in Ordinary Time 2021 - Friday - Fig Tree, Faith and Forgiveness

 One of the unfortunate decisions of the liturgical reform after Vatican II was what happened to this week after Pentecost. For hundreds of years, this week was celebrated with great solemnity as the Pentecost Octave. The Veni Sancte Spiritus, the Pentecost Sequence would be sung, calling down the Holy Spirit upon the Church. Pentecost Week was also one of the four sets of ember days, corresponding to the changing of the seasons.

Now, after Vatican II, we just kind of starkly find ourselves in the middle of Ordinary Time with no real reference to Pentecost Sunday. Our scripture readings simply resume from where we left off all the way back in February prior to the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday.

So if you remember, all the way back then, we were reading sequentially from the Gospel of Mark and we were pretty deep into the Lord’s public ministry. In fact, we’ll be concluding Mark’s Gospel within the next two weeks.

Today’s Gospel takes place on Monday of Holy Week. The day prior, of course, the Lord had entered triumphantly through the gates of Jerusalem. And that night, he had made the short trip back to Bethany, where he stayed in the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.

St. Mark then presents us with these three vignettes from Holy Monday.  First, as he was leaving Bethany the Lord curses this fig tree.  Next, he chases the money changers out of the temple.  Finally, returning to Bethany he gives his disciples a beautiful, yet challenging teaching on authentic faith using the example of the now-withered Fig Tree.  What is going on here on Holy Monday?

The Lord uses this cursed-withered Fig Tree as a metaphor for the state of religious life for the people of Israel. The religious leaders and the people had allowed rot and corruption to enter God’s holy Temple. What was meant to be a place of blessing and worship had become a place of corruption and rotten fruit.

The powers of spiritual rot and corruption are always trying to worm their way into the Church and into their lives. So the Lord teaches his disciples that they must be people of forgiveness and prayer. Their hearts must be rooted in his teaching, in his Gospel, in deep and radical faith. 

We can sense spiritual corruption worming around in our lives wherever there is a failure to forgive from our heart, wherever there is coldness toward the importance of prayer, wherever trust in God’s mighty power grows cold. 

This is a wonderful teaching as we begin, once again the season of Ordinary Time. That in the ordinary course of our lives we need to practice authentic forgiveness, vibrant prayer, and radical faith for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

 

That all members of the Church will discover and offer their gifts wholeheartedly in service of the Gospel. 

For an increase in vocations to the priesthood and religious life, that young people may live in faith-filled homes where the Gospel is cherished, studied, and lived-out.

For the grace to set good Christian example, and to courage to share the faith with non-believers and the lapsed.

For all of the sick and suffering, for the grace to unite their sufferings with Christ and to know His consolation and peace.

For our departed loved ones and all of the souls in purgatory, and for N. for whom this Mass is offered. We pray to the Lord.

Incline your merciful ear to our prayers, we ask, O Lord, and listen in kindness to the supplications of those who call on you. Through Christ our Lord

34th Week in OT 2019 - Friday - Daniel's Apocalyptic Vision and the Spiritual Summer

One of the last readings of the liturgical year is today’s apocalyptic vision of Daniel. Daniel’s apocalyptic vision of beasts rising from the sea strongly resembles the vision of John in the Book of Revelation, and like most apocalyptic passages in scripture is highly symbolic. The four vicious beasts rising out of the sea represent the kingdoms of the earth rising out the chaotic sea of history. For Daniel, the lion with eagle’s wings was Nebuchadnezzar, the bear with three tusks ready to attack was the kingdom of the Medes, the leopard with four heads was the Persians, and the terrifying beast with iron teeth and ten horns was the technologically advanced Greek Empire, the blasphemous little horn, Antiochus Epiphanes.

Church fathers have interpreted this vision, along with the vision of Revelation, to be symbolic of the different kingdoms which stood in opposition to God throughout history, and the little horn to be symbolic of the Anti-Christ.

Whoever these strange symbols stand for, it is clear that they will be judged by the one who sits on the throne of heaven. And this one, is not like those beasts who rise up from the sea, he is not terrifying and vicious, but glorious and just. And, he resembles not the beasts, but shares the human condition. He is God and man, whose coming we prepare for during the upcoming season of Advent.

Our task, again, as we said the other day, is to be on the right side of history, not in league with the vicious kingdoms the earth, but in union with the Ancient One who sits on the throne of heaven.
In the Gospel, the Ancient-One-made-flesh speaks of a spiritual summer in which the fig trees bloom, their buds burst over. He speaks of the spiritual summer of the age of the Church, in which the seeds of the Gospel bloom into the fruits of the Spirit.

To be on the right side of history is to be cultivating those fruits, allowing the Gospel to bloom into the fruits of charity and joy and peace and justice and patience and long-suffering.
Though Advent takes place mostly in winter, it is meant to be a spiritual summer in which we prepare assiduously for the Lord through repentance, penance, prayer, and charity.

In the hours we have before Advent, prepare to prepare, come up with a spiritual plan for your Advent: your spiritual reading, spiritual penance, a list of the good works you hope to engage in, to allow the Gospel to bear fruit in your lives, fruit that will last for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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Lord, sanctify your bishops and priests, and grant them courage to preach the Gospel in its fullness.
Make the lives of parents examples of faith to inspire their children to seek first your heavenly kingdom.

Bring all those who have fallen away back to the sacraments, help them to repent of their sins and desire the life that can only come from you.

That the upcoming season of Advent may be a season of spiritual renewal for the Church.
Bring comfort to the sick and suffering, charity and care to the destitute and down-trodden, be present through your church to the miserable.

Welcome into your kingdom all the faithful departed, those whose names are written in our parish necrology, all clergy and religious, and X for whom this mass is offered.

O God, you know that our life in this present age is subject to suffering and need, hear the prayers of those who cry to you and receive the prayers of those who believe in you. Through Christ our Lord.

3rd Sunday of Lent 2019 - "Are you saved?"

“Are you saved?” You may have heard this question asked by “born again” or “evangelical” Christians. A gentleman from a previous parish assignment told me a story how one day of how a pair of nicely dressed fella’s carrying bibles came to his front door and asked him “Are you saved?” To which he responded, “Am I saved? Am I saved? No, I’m Catholic!”

He then said, “Am I saved? Well, I believe that the Lord Jesus by His Death and Resurrection has saved me by my sins, by his blood my sins are washed away, he opened to me the gates of heaven, he gave me the chance to spend eternity with him forever. So yes, I believe I am saved…BUT, I can’t take that for granted. Being saved is something I need to work on every day. There’s nothing I want more than to spend eternity with my Lord and my beloved wife, BUT I can never just presume heaven is guaranteed to me. So every morning I pray, I try my best to get to Mass and Holy Communion, and every night I say an act of contrition, because I know I’m still a sinner. And when I know I’ve committed a serious sin, I go to Confession…I am saved, but I just don’t think we can take salvation for granted.”  Good Catholic answer.

In a sense, this answer encapsulates one of the paradoxes of the Christian faith. On the one hand, you bet we are saved: By Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection, Our Lord has saved us from sin and Satan. On the other hand, the reception of that gift of salvation is something we need to be constantly open to. Baptism is not a get-out-of-jail free card. Faith is a living relationship: it requires daily prayer, confession of sin, reception of the Eucharist; and when we cease these things, our souls begin to wither, like the fig tree in the Gospel today.

For if salvation was guaranteed by a one-time profession of faith, why would St. Paul give the warning, we heard in the 2nd reading today? He said,  “Whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall.” We need to take care not to fall, because falling is a real possibility. Earlier in the same first letter to the Corinthians, Paul speaks about the importance of mortifying—disciplining—his flesh for the sake of his salvation. He said, , “ I discipline by body lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. “Disqualification” from what? From heaven! Paul worried, or should I say, he acknowledged the possibility that he could be preaching the Gospel in one moment, and then, because of his failure to control his sinful appetites that he could lose out on heaven.

Jesus in the Gospels gives many such stark warnings. He says, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of My Father in heaven.”  He says, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, unless you take up your cross and follow me, unless you repent…you’ll perish, as we heard repeated twice in our Gospel today, unless you are born again by water and the holy spirit, unless your righteousness surprises the scribes and the pharisees, unless you become like this little child you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Salvation is a path. Baptism sets us on that path, but it does not assure us salvation. Salvation is not assured simply by pronouncing some formula or creed, it doesn’t just require confessing ones sins and receiving communion. It doesn’t just require offering our sufferings in union with Jesus. It’s not just any one of those things by themselves, rather, salvation requires a living relationship with God through Christ that encompasses the whole of life: the rituals of the Church, humility of spirit, the acts of mercy, obedience to Church teaching, fervent recourse to the saints, all of this is part of salvation that we cannot take for granted.

St. Paul’s warning today in the second reading is an essential warning: “whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall”. If you think your salvation is guaranteed you are on slippery ground. None of us here in this place are beyond the danger of earthly pride, none of us have fully achieved the holy perfection for which we were made. We are works in progress. God is working to perfect us and sanctify us and stretch our hearts to be more like His, and hopefully we are cooperating with God’s grace to this end.

But there is the real possibility that we can turn away or obstruct God’s work, especially if pride gets in the way. And this is a possibility to our dying breath, because if we are not free to turn away we aren’t really free. Love requires freedom. Salvation involves cooperating freely with the grace of God. Saying yes, not just once, but every day, every moment.

We look to the saints as our great examples of sanctity, because they are the souls who say yes to God, over and over, without hesitation, not just when it is convenient for them, even when it means being brought out of their comfort zone. They give God the blank check, they approach the burning bush in prayer, even when it means that their egos might be immolated by that holy fire. They undergo serious penances, so that the soil of their souls be might tilled and made fertile and fruitful. They truly dare to utter from the depths of their being “speak Lord your servant is listening.” You should learn everything you can about your patron saints, who want to teach you how to respond generously to God and heroically, like they did.

In the Gospel, the Lord lamented that the religious leadership of Israel had failed to bear fruit: He compared them to the fruitless fig tree, because they had ceased to bear fruit for God. The leadership had failed to lead people to Jesus and ready acceptance of the Gospel. Fruitlessness. The Pharisees thought that “their salvation was assured” because they were observing certain external precepts that they decided were the marks of holiness.

But salvation requires not just external observance, but the humility to acknowledge that I am still in need of help, I am in need of conversion to the depth of my heart, I need that living relationship with God that is nurtured by prayer and manifested in the acts of mercy.

“Are you saved?” Yes, we are saved by faith, and that’s why I’m here at Mass lest I take that gift of salvation for granted. Yes, we are saved by faith, but that faith tells us that we are works in progress. Yes, we are saved by faith, by that faith that requires daily conformity with Christ, conformity of the mind, the heart, and will, assent to all that the Church proposes for belief, humble acknowledgement of my sins, acts of mercy toward my neighbor, and the reception of his flesh and blood.

May our Lenten observances assist us in seeking that daily conversion the Lord wants for us, that will enable us to bear fruit for the kingdom, that we may “take care not to fall” and so come to our eternal reward for the glory of God and salvation of souls.