3rd Sunday of Lent
We are at the third Sunday of Lent and I really cannot believe that we are at this point in our journey. During this time there are many recurring themes but the one we hear most about is repentance change and coming back. In our first reading from Exodus Moses encounters God in a burning bush at Horeb. Instructed to remove his sandals on holy ground, he is tasked to rescue Israelites from Egypt, armed with God’s name, “I AM.” In the responsorial psalm we praise the Lord for His kindness: forgiving sins, healing diseases, rescuing lives, and crowning us with love. He is righteous, merciful, and gracious, with boundless mercy.
In the second reading from 1 Corinthians Our forefathers, guided by a cloud and sea, were baptized into Moses, shared spiritual sustenance, and drank from Christ, the spiritual rock. Their failures in the wilderness warn us against evil and complacency especially today with all we see going on around us and in the world. In our Gospel reading for this Sunday Jesus urges those who are listening to him to use the time that is available for repentance. In the parable of the fig-tree it is stressed that the time will come for a last chance for us to bear fruit. This parable is a wakeup call and it tells us that this is a favourable time to make the changes we have been putting off and know we must do in order to bear spiritual fruit. The gardener asked the owner of the vineyard to give the barren fig tree another chance to produce fruit. He promised to dig around it and manure it, to give it one last chance to prove itself. So it is with us God gives us this annual time of Lent to prove ourselves as there are many things in our lives that we need to change. It is a time for us to consider our way of living our lives and what it means to be a Christian. It is a time when the word of the Lord will lift us up and encourage us to blossom and bear spiritual fruit.
People and societies that live without ever questioning themselves have ruin as their only destination. Conversion, on the other hand, while not preserving us from problems and misfortunes, allows us to face the problems that arise in a different “way”. When we die to sin we identify ourselves in a real and concrete way with the redemptive power of Christ who died on the cross and rose again at Easter. Our calling, is to be strong, giving witness to our faith as we go forward to Holy Week and Easter so that others will see and know what we believe and as a result of our example they might even have the courage to take up the challenge that Jesus gives to all of us to follow him as pilgrims of hope during this year.
Fullerton T 