Repent, Produce, Evangelize!

Deacon Kevin Gingras

March 20, 2022

Third Sunday of Lent

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/032022-YearC.cfm

In today’s reading from Exodus, we see Moses, a good son-in-law tending his father-in-law’s flock when something wondrous happens, the burning bush.  As this scene unfolds God calls Moses by name.   Then God introduces Himself to Moses. First God lets Moses know that He is the God of the Patriarchs, the One who established the covenant with them.  Then God lets Moses know of His plan to save His people.  Finally, and most importantly God lets Moses know His name.  God was establishing a relationship with Moses who was about to play a significant role in leading God’s people out of slavery and suffering.  Moses, like Jesus Christ, would become a mediator between God and his chosen people.

Our second reading, from the first letter to the Corinthians, gives us a three-thousand-foot view of what happened with Moses and God’s people.  

our ancestors were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea, and all of them were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. All ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from a spiritual rock that followed them

It explains how they were struck down in the desert for the evil they did and for grumbling against God. Fortunately, for us and them, our God is a God of multiple chances.  Moses was indeed a good mediator for God’s people. Today Jesus Christ is our perfect mediator but we still must heed the warnings of our ancestors and not choose evil and grumble as they did!

To segue into the Gospel we can repeat that phrase, our God, fortunately, is a God of multiple chances.  We don’t know much about what Pilate did to kill the Galileans and mingle their own blood with the blood of their sacrifices nor do we know much about what happened in Siloam when that tower fell and killed eighteen people.  All we do know is that Jesus tells us that their sins were no greater than any others.  After that, Jesus gives us this heartstopping quote:

But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!

 

Those are tough words but we are all sitting here, we are all still alive so therefore we all still have time to do just that.  Repent.  Jesus follows up those tough words with a story, a parable he tells them out of love for them and we should apply that parable to us today.

This parable is a tough one for me as I’m not much of a gardener and if there was an unproductive apple tree in my orchard and my wife wanted to cut down and I said to my wife “give me one more year to cultivate and care for this apple tree and if it is unproductive you can cut it down” I can assure you in one year my wife would be cutting down that apple tree!  Well, actually I would be cutting it down at her bidding, either way, that tree would be firewood next year!  

In today’s parable of the fig tree, we have to assume that Jesus was talking about a skilled gardener who saved the tree from the ax.

Each one of us today is that fig tree.  So how do we save our own bark from being thrown into the fire?  We repent!  We produce!  We evangelize! We sow fruit wherever we go!  

First off - Repent!  Go to confession, find a when a local church has confessions and then go. We must start cultivating our own ground first.  It’s like when we are in an airplane and read those terrifying air mask instructions (gosh I do not like to fly):

Place it firmly over your nose and mouth, secure the elastic band behind your head, and breathe normally. Although the bag does not inflate, oxygen is flowing to the mask. If you are traveling with a child or someone who requires assistance, secure your mask on first, and then assist the other person.

Before we try to evangelize and help others produce fruit, we must take care of ourselves first!  If we are a dead fig tree we won’t be very attractive to the other fig trees!  That bit sounded much better in my head but I hope you get the image.

Next, once we have been taken care of go evangelize and produce!  We don’t need to stand on a street corner scaring people that the end is near or handing out crazy religious tracts.  Start close to home instead.  We can start with our family members or good friends who might not get to Church each week or at all!  We can ask them to come with you next weekend.  If they say no, don’t get angry, don’t plead and beg.  Just let it go until next weekend and lovingly ask them again.  If they continue to say no - pray for them.  Pray hard for them.

We also must not be afraid to talk about our faith.  If we don’t know a lot about our faith learn!  Ask!  Discover!  Our Catholic faith is not all about rules and regulations, it’s about ways for us to love God and ways in which we can see how much God loves us so perfectly!  I find that the more I read scripture, the more I study scripture the more I know and love scripture and the more I realize that our God loves me!  Our God loves all of us!

At our particular judgment, the goal is not to have Jesus Christ look at us and say we exhausted the soil!  Instead, let us live by this quote from Abraham Lincoln: 

Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.