Homily for the
3d Sunday of Lent
March 23, 2025
Luke 13: 1-9
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx
“If you don’t repent, you’ll all perish as they did” (Luke 13: 3, 5).
That’s
rather emphatic, isn’t it?
We
don’t know anything about the 2 events today’s gospel speaks of. The 1st one, some sort of bloodshed
instigated by Pontius Pilate, accords with what the Jewish historian Josephus
tells us about 2 massacres at Pilate’s hands in Samaria and Jerusalem.[1]
Whatever
these tragedies were, they were evidently on people’s minds as Jesus spoke, as
we’re aware today of the more than 40 people who died as a result of tornadoes,
fires, and auto pile-ups in last week’s severe weather, or the tens of
thousands who are dying in Ukraine and Gaza.
Jesus
uses the bloodshed and the accident to advise his listeners that the victims
were no worse sinners than everyone else.
God wasn’t punishing them in particular for their sins. Or to put it another way, everyone’s a sinner
and everyone will “perish as they did” unless they repent of their sinful ways.
Jesus
may have had in mind the political unrest in Roman-ruled Palestine. The Jews were ever on the verge of rebellion,
and when they did revolt in 66, Rome responded brutally with slaughter,
enslavement, and the destruction of Jerusalem.
Had people listened to Jesus’ call to attend to God’s concerns, to
living the commandments, to practicing charity toward one another, that
national disaster would’ve been avoided.
“Unless you repent” of your sinful ways, he seems to be declaring,
you’ll perish as Pilate’s victims did, and those killed by a collapsing tower.
“You’ll
all perish”—that’s a warning to us, too.
Maybe not in a massacre or an accident, but we’re all going to die. It’s been the Church’s practice since Jesus’
time that we should remember that inescapable fact. Some of the saints had a custom that we’d
consider bizarre of keeping a skull on their desks to remind them every
day. Many saints observed the slogan memento
mori: “remember death.” So Jesus cautions us, not only in his dialog
today but in several parables. Make sure
you’re in God’s grace, make sure you’re ready for the moment of your transition
from here to hereafter. If you haven’t
repented of your sins, you will perish indeed, with the loss of your immortal
soul and of eternal life.
But
today’s gospel doesn’t stop there. Jesus
tells an encouraging parable, a parable that illustrates God’s patience with
us. The owner of the fig tree gives it a
little more time to become fruitful. In
spite of how slowly we trail behind Christ on the road to heaven, in spite of our
sins, God gives us time to change our ways, time to catch up with Jesus on the
road.
St.
Luke’s gospel is the gospel of Jesus’ mercy.
In Luke we read the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the
lost son (aka the “prodigal son”; Luke 15) and the tax collector in the temple who
prayed for mercy (18:9-14); Luke tells us that Jesus cast 7 demons out of Mary
Magdalene (8:2); Luke recounts the story of Zaccheus the tax collector who
looked for Jesus and was saved (19:1-10); Luke reports Jesus’ promise of
paradise to the criminal crucified alongside him (23:40-43).
So
today’s gospel passage offers us hope of pleasing God yet by repentance and
living according to God’s ways—of producing good fruit. He cultivates us with the sacred Scriptures
and the examples of the saints; he fertilizes our hearts with constant
reminders that he loves us and desires our friendship. This Lenten season, this season of repentance,
reminds us to turn from our sinful inclinations, to listen to Jesus, and to act
as disciples of Jesus. Jesus’ road is
the one that leads to eternal life, and he wants very much to accompany us on that
road.
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