Reflection for the Third Sunday of Lent
When I was growing up, I remember that my father really enjoyed gardening. He absolutely loved picking the harvest and preparing it into something delicious. Around spring, he would go to the store and get seeds to begin growing his squash, jalapeno, watermelon and tomato plants. At the end of the season, the produce was abundant. I remember that he would often times produce the best and biggest vegetables that I had ever seen. But to cultivate the ground and care for the plants required a lot of work, work that paid off at the end. He would always be attentive to any drastic weather changes that could kill off his plants or any pests that would harm the produce. But he would he would see the fruit of his labor in abundance. In today’s Gospel, our Lord offers us an image of this.
Christ gives us a parable of a fig tree. A man goes to get fruit from his fig tree and it has not produced any fruit. Due to this, he asks the gardener to cut down the fig tree. However, the gardener requests that he be allowed to cultivate the ground and to fertilize it so that it can bear fruit in the future. It not, he will cut it down. This is very similar to another account in the gospels when our Lord goes in search of fruit on a fig tree and he finds none; our Lord curses the fig tree for not producing fruit and the fig tree withers and dies. The sterility of the fig trees in both accounts are important to note. My dear brothers and sister, we see the importance of fertilizing and cultivating the ground so as to produce much fruit.
The fig tree that we see in both stories that I have mentioned represents the spiritual sterility of Israel. This, however, not only applies to fruitless Israel, but also to us. In the gospel of John, our Lord reminds us that he is the vine and that we are the branches. All that remain in our Lord bear much fruit and those who do not, they will be cut off and thrown into the fire. For us, we should always strive to produce much fruit by remaining with our Lord. However, we much know how to properly cultivate and fertilize the ground of our soul in order to produce much fruit. The seed that the Gospel of Christ plants into our hearts must first germinate. This is done by us practicing the faith. We cultivate and fertilize our hearts by the practice of hearing the word of God, praying and especially participating of the holy sacrifice of the Mass. However, we not only allow the word of God to penetrate into our hearts, but we should also allow it to act in our lives. It is completely useless to constantly hear the word of God, to study sacred scripture and event to come to Mass, if we do not allow these experiences to change our lives. Pope Francis put this beautifully when he states, regarding the Eucharist, that “[the Eucharist] transforms our life into a gift to God and to our brothers” and that the Eucharist puts us “in tune with the heart of Christ”. These, my dear brothers and sisters, are the fruits that the true Catholic must produce. During lent, we are presented with the importance of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Considering the importance of the disciple to produce fruit, we should consider in what ways we can produce fruit during this Lenten season. Prayer should be foundation of our lives. Without it, we have no fertile soil that we can depend on to produce fruit. Fasting allows us to cultivate and fertilize the ground. Almsgiving, i.e. giving to the needy, becomes the fruit that we are asked to produce. I invite you, my dear brothers and sisters, to consider in what ways you are cultivating and producing fruit in your life of faith during this Lenten season. Let us not come before the Risen Lord empty handed on Easter, but let us come with much fruit.
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