Burst Open

Burst Open

Friday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

Piety

Jesus told his disciples a parable. “Consider the fig tree and all the other trees. When their buds burst open, you see for yourselves and know that summer is now near; in the same way, when you see these things happening, know that the Kingdom of God is near. Amen, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”  Luke 21:29-33

Study

A day after our Thanksgiving festivities, we cannot take a Gospel reading about a fig tree in isolation. Not in isolation of fig references elsewhere in the NT.  Not in isolation from the role food plays in our life.  Not in isolation of the season of harvest that we enjoyed yesterday – be it in the form of turkey, pumpkin pie, potatoes, corn, or other staples. 

All three synoptic Gospels re-tell stories of both productive and barren fig trees. Jesus often used the tasty fig as a symbol that his audience understood very well to make his challenging preaching easier to consume.   

The symbolic fig tree represents life itself.  New buds appear on its branches when Winter ends. The buds open into blossoms and green leaves in Spring. Fruit appears as Summer arrives.  Then, the leaves and fruit fall foretell another “long winter’s night.”   

Jesus knows that fruit trees, like people, require proper care and handling to produce a luscious harvest year in and year out. When I was growing up in the Garden State, we did not have fig trees or vineyards.  We had apple trees.  The blossoms of spring gave way to little green apples in the summer.  It was great fun to climb the trees and pick your apples. 

Once, when visiting my aunt in Florida, she had an orange tree in her yard.  We went out in the morning, picked oranges and drank the fresh juice for breakfast. 

Such work is not only rewarding. It is tasty. Seeing the process teaches more than we learn by going to A&P or Shop-Rite or Safeway or Giant and buying the fruit off the shelves.  Fruit doesn’t just appear in the grocery store; it’s not grown on a Peapod delivery truck. It takes time and care to nurture and develop.

The world is this way, too.  We need to understand the implications of life cycles and cultivating a product to the end. 

Action

Repentance and change are not fashionable words today.  We are encouraged to get ahead. Not only that but to plow forward into a prosperous retirement filled with beach houses and a Lexus in the driveway and no credit card bills after Black Friday. Any change we do is not to see the world out of the eyes of the poor, but more to aspire to be wealthy. 

Yet, Jesus calls on us to change the direction in which we focus on happiness.  He wants us to stop doing something that’s not productive for the Gospel or something that is taking us in the wrong direction – away from the Kingdom. It means to stop going in a direction that can be self-destructive, and turn around and go another—in a productive way and just and, even, godly.

Christ calls us to stop breaking God’s law and begin to burst forth in our mission by obeying it.  Christ meant it in the same way He used it when first preaching the gospel of the Kingdom of God, as quoted by John the Baptist:

He went throughout [the] whole region of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah: “A voice of one crying out in the desert: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths. Luke 3:3-4

John could have easily used a direct reference to what Jesus says later in Luke’s Gospel.  “Produce good [figs] as evidence of your repentance.”

Fortunately (for us), Jesus did not come to call the righteous to repentance but the barren fig trees – i.e., sinners.  He is willing to provide the care and feeding of the fig tree, so we produce good fruit. 

As we prepare to conclude this 2019 Liturgical Year tomorrow, we remember that this is a year in which we end it without some of the people who started this journey with us.  Yet, we also are blessed with new companions on the journey who were born or who came into our lives.  Next year will be the same.  For some, the earth will pass away.   Let us put our renewed trust in Christ as if this were our very first Cursillo Closing Cross Ceremony because Christ IS COUNTING ON YOU. And I AM COUNTING ON CHRIST.