Homily for the
3d Sunday of Lent
March 20, 2022
Luke 13: 1-9
[adapted for] St.
Joseph Residence, N.R.
St. Joseph Church, New Rochelle
Do you think the citizens of Mariupol and Kiev
are greater sinners than everyone else?
We don’t know anything else about whatever Pontius
Pilate did in Galilee in the incident to which Jesus refers in today’s gospel;
but apparently he had his Roman troops kill some people in connection with some
religious gathering. That fits the
little we know from history about Pilate’s character—besides, of course, that
he ordered the crucifixion of Jesus, an innocent man.
Nor do we know anything about the incident at
Siloam in Jerusalem that killed 18 people, who may have been passers-by or
perhaps workmen but who certainly were as innocent as the victims who make news
in our time like the golf team killed on a Texas highway last Tuesday nite or
people killed in the Midwest by a tornado.
Jesus replies to whoever reported those
tragedies to him that a like fate awaits them unless they repent.
And the innocent victims of Putin’s war on
Ukraine? They don’t deserve what’s
happening to them. Nor do the victims of
war and terrorism in the Middle East, in Ethiopia, in Congo, in sub-Saharan
Africa, and in numerous other places on our globe. Nor do human beings in the womb who fall
victim to Planned Parenthood, the policies promoted by our President and other
officials, and unscrupulous physicians and lawyers.
Unlike the crash of a tower in Jerusalem or
an auto accident on the highway, wars and violence are the results of human
choices—multiple choices, not of a school test kind but of ongoing choices made
by many individual actors, such as Putin and his advisors and his generals or
terrorist leaders and their fanatic followers.
There is grave sin, mortal sin, at work here. Those who don’t repent will meet a terrible
fate, according to Jesus. He doesn’t
necessarily mean they’ll meet a violent end like some gangster or a
drone-targeted terrorist or the leaders of Nazi Germany. There is a worse fate than that.
Jesus cautions his listeners to heed the fate
of sinners: “If you do not repent, you
will all perish” (Luke 13:3,5).
Undeniably, all of us are sinners, no better and no worse, probably,
than Pilate’s Galilean victims or those on whom that tower collapsed—just
ordinary people, ordinary people who sometimes make sinful choices in what we
do to other people or what we say about other people: our infidelities, lies, dishonesty, slanders,
callous indifference, unwillingness to forgive, etc. And undeniably, eventually we’re going to die
and come to judgment. Jesus Christ “is
seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty; from there he will come to
judge the living and the dead.”
That judgment will result in a sentence of
damnation for the unrepentant. In this
sacred season of Lent Jesus invites us to repent. He is, after all, a merciful and loving
Savior who doesn’t desire the death of sinners but their forgiveness and
everlasting life—the same gift for all of us that he bestowed on the repentant
outlaw at his side on Calvary (Luke 23:42-43).
Jesus reinforces his warning to repent with a parable about a fig tree. It hasn’t been productive, and its owner decides to cut it down (13:6-7). His gardener, however, pleads for some patience with the tree (13:8). Give it time to “repent,” so to say, and encourage that time with some attentive care. Jesus is like that gardener; he brings to us his Father’s attentive care: an invitation to repent, forgiveness lavishly bestowed, assurance that God loves us and wants us to be with him forever, even a willingness to carry our sins to the cross and thru the cross to defeat the powers of hell by rising from the dead and offering us a like resurrection.
So
let’s listen to Jesus and “bear fruit” of repentance (13:9). During Lent let’s examine our lives,
acknowledge our sinful desires and behavior, go the sacrament of
Reconciliation, and welcome an abundance of divine grace that will make our
lives fruitful with virtue.
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