Jesus’s Warning: Lest You Perish, Repent!

Today’s readings are an urgent appeal to conversion, an urgent appeal to stop thinking I have all the time in the world—mistakenly believing that God’s goodness means I can be saved without conversion. It is an exhortation to respond to the mercy of God, instead of taking God’s mercy for granted. Let me go over the readings briefly.

In the first reading (Exodus 3:1-8a, 13-15), God introduces Himself to a suffering people. His name is mysterious. His name is not Mars or Jupiter, His name is not “The God of the Mountains” or “The God of the Stars”: He is “I AM.” Everything we know “is”, but absolutely nothing is like God, and therefore the best we can say about Him is that He “is”; not just because He “is there”, but because He possesses every perfection we can think of, “He is always filled with all that is good, and does not need anything from anyone” (St. Irenaeus). He is fullness of perfection, fullness of being, He is. Because of this, He has the power to rescue Israel from Egypt. Because of this, He comes to the rescue without being asked. He is powerful, He does not need anything from anyone, and because of this He is Merciful, He uses his power to save those who could give Him nothing in return, those who had not even asked… Our God is great, our God is merciful, our God desires to use His power to bestow life upon us.

But, in the second reading (1 Cor 10:1-6, 10-12), St. Paul tells us to be careful. Even those Israelites who experienced God’s mighty saving deeds in the desert, were punished by God because of their sins. They had all been baptized into Moses, says St. Paul; they had all eaten the same spiritual food; but most of them were struck down in the desert because, even after having received from God those blessings, they still desired evil things and grumbled against God. St. Paul says: “These things… have been written down as a warning to us.” We too have been baptized, we too have received spiritual food, but that does not mean that we are saved. “Therefore, whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall.” That is, we cannot think that we are secure simply because of what we have received. We need to respond to those blessings with good deeds, otherwise those blessings will be the reason for a greater punishment. Because more is required from the one who has received more.

Jesus, with stark clarity in the Gospel (Luke 13:1-9), is even more alarming. But, what kind of alarm is this? It is the loud cry of the mother seeing her children about to walk off a cliff, not knowing how else to get their attention to save them from disaster. Or the good scaring a father tries to give his wayward children—not the way the lion scares in an exercise of mere power, but the scaring that comes from reason, from light, from love. In the first part of today’s Gospel, Jesus corrects people’s misconception that bad things happen to bad people. People were scandalized at what Pilate had done to some Galileans, and Jesus also recalls another unhappy event, where a tower had fallen and killed eighteen people. The first group died because of human violence, the second because of an accident. And Jesus immediately tells them: “And do you think that they suffered those things because their sins were greater than yours? Do you think that you are safe? If you do not repent, you will all perish in the same way.” We are all sinners, and if we do not repent, we will all be punished in the same way. It will not be Pilate, but the Father of Justice who will ask for an account of the blood of Jesus. It will not be the tower of Siloam but, on the Last Day, Jesus Christ the cornerstone, He himself will be the rock falling upon the sinners who do not repent.

But, to make clear His message of repentance and Mercy, Jesus finishes with a parable—shocking, yet beautiful. The owner of the fig tree, the Father, has desired for such a long time to get fruit from His tree, which is the people of God, and has gotten nothing. He is upset that this unfruitful tree continues to waste the soil. His people do not repent, they do not give fruits of good works. The right thing to do would be to cut down that tree, to punish. But the Gardener, who is Jesus, says to God or Father, “Let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it”. We should understand “one more year” as our present time in history—the time from after Jesus’ life on the earth until the end of the world. “I myself will work on your people and fertilize them with my own blood.” As if Jesus were saying to the Father: “Wait, Lord, do not punish; let us give them one more opportunity. Let us see what they do with the time they have left! If still then there is no fruit, Father, You can cut it down.”

If we do not take advantage of this last opportunity, we can expect only what we deserve. The Mercy of God does not mean that God does not punish, but that He gives those who deserve punishment an opportunity to repent. Let us not abuse his Mercy, let us not take the time we have for granted. Let us do what we have to do now, in this “year of grace” which is life. Life is the time we have left to secure Eternal Life, and none of us knows how much time we have left. Therefore, as David said, “If today you hear the voice of the Lord, harden not your hearts.” (Psalm 95)

May the remaining days of Lent be a time of repentance and conversion for all of us. May we wake up to the mercy of God, who has the power to forgive every sin, no matter how grave, the power to make every tree bear fruit, no matter how impossible this may seem to us.