Saturday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time
For what the law, weakened by the flesh, was powerless to do, this God has done: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for the sake of sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the righteous decree of the law might be fulfilled in us, who live not according to the flesh but according to the spirit. Romans 8:3-4
Who may go up the mountain of the LORD? Who can stand in his holy place? "The clean of hand and pure of heart, who are not devoted to idols, who have not sworn falsely. Psalm 24:3-4
He said to him in reply, “Sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; it may bear fruit in the future. If not you can cut it down.” Luke 13:8-9
God of life and peace, we know we are in need of cultivation in order to get us ready to live a life centered on the concerns of the spirit. Bear with us in patience and grace as you did with your servants in
http://www.usccb.org/nab/102707.shtml
What is the end that we are pursuing? How do we achieve it?
Psalm 24 gives us a road map to this goal of life and peace. “The clean of hand and pure of heart, who are not devoted to idols, who have not sworn falsely. They will receive blessings from the LORD, and justice from their saving God. Such are the people that love the LORD.” Psalm 24:4-6
We can not pursue any means to achieve a just end. The means must be congruent and justify the end we seek. The notes in the New American Bible (NAB) succinctly point out the deeper meaning of what has changed after Jesus died on the cross:
Through the redemptive work of Christ, Christians have been liberated from the terrible forces of sin and death. Holiness was impossible so long as the flesh (or our "old self"), that is, self-interested hostility toward God, frustrated the divine objectives expressed in the law. What is worse, sin used the law to break forth into all manner of lawlessness. All this is now changed. At the cross God broke the power of sin and pronounced sentence on it.
We are powerless to overcome the forces and temptations of evil alone. The parallel emphasis in both Romans 8 and Luke 13 is on the graceful character of God. Like the barren fig tree, we need the gardener to “cultivate” our lives and the environment around us and “fertilize it” with the concerns of the spirit. Only when we recognize that God has done this for us will we bear fruit in the future.
Fr. Tom Keating reminds us that the parable of the barren fig tree recalls the theme of the “barren made fruitful by the Lord's direct intervention.” Immediately after telling the disciples this parable, Jesus heals a woman in the temple on the Sabbath. However, Jesus then must defend himself after he is reprimanded by the leader of the synagogue. The image of the barren fig tree evokes the sense that the religion of the day was not producing the desired results of mercy and grace for individuals as well as the overall community.
The religion of that day – as represented by the leader -- was not producing what God intended. As represented by the woman who was crippled for 18 years, despite her attendance at temple, her faith had borne no fruit in her life and health.
For us, in context of the subsequent story, this new sign of the time of the resurrected fig tree becomes a metaphor of the sign of God’s grace and patience in our lives through the person of Jesus. God gives us – the proverbial the fig tree – one more chance by sending us a gardener in the person of His son. Through Jesus, God gives us the life-giving nutrients (bread and wine transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ) that we need to produce results.
As Fr. Keating reminds us, “it does not matter if we do not succeed in our own estimation or in that of others.” God has done this. Thanks to the patient cultivation and fertilizing by God, we as individuals and the overall community can then witness the concerns of the Spirit – life and peace – rather than death.
What is special about us is God's incredible solidarity with our ordinary lives: with our sense of failure, futility, getting nowhere spiritually, and our lack of inner resources to cope with our particular difficulties. In the parables, daily life is so clearly the place where the kingdom is working that symbols of success are totally irrelevant. They are like icing on a cake. We cannot live on icing. We need more substantial food. Trust in God disregards the evidence of everyday life that God is absent or forgetful of us and brings us into direct contact with the God of everyday. The God of pure faith is so close: closer than breathing, closer than thinking, closer than choosing, closer than consciousness itself.[1]
Today, we may not have a barren fig tree in the back yard but we do have rain knocking the brown leaves from our drought-stricken trees. We have fire engulfing people and property in
Yet the daily readings force us to focus on cultivation and fertilizer. We know that the fallen leaves and even the barren fig trees that are pruned become the mulch for spring growth. Despite the cold dormant winter that lies ahead of us, new growth will emerge.
You can help new life emerge. Take for example the fires out west. Cultivate the concerns of the spirit with a gift to charities serving people affected by the wildfires out west. Check out the resource list on the Network for Good Internet site web site for options to give financially, volunteer or to learn more about the danger of wildfires.
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