Take Care Not To Fall

Take Care Not To Fall

March 3, 2013

Third Sunday of Lent C

By Rev. Joe McCloskey, SJ

So Moses decided, “I must turn aside to look at this remarkable sight. Why does the bush not burn up?”  When the LORD saw that he had turned aside to look, God called out to him from the bush: Moses!  Moses!  He answered, “Here I am.”  God said: Do not come near!  Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.  Exodus 3:3-5

 “There once was a person who had a fig tree planted in his orchard, and when he came in search of fruit on it but found none, he said to the gardener, ‘For three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fig tree but have found none.  So cut it down.
Why should it exhaust the soil?’  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 13:6-9

Piety

All the burning bushes of our lives are the makeup of our piety.  Piety is made up of all the encounters with Christ that have touched up our lives with something of Christ.  Our piety takes its beginnings from all the holy grounds we walk upon.  Our points of contact flow out of the questions that touch our souls from seeing something we cannot explain.  God lives in all the mysteries of life that surround us and cause us to look deeper than the appearance of what we are seeing.  When we see with our souls, we are entering the realms of piety where what we have seen leaves a mark on us that we call piety.  All the happenings of our lives that raise our hearts to God are part of our piety.  Piety is our daily lived contact with God. 

Study

The Lord speaks to us through the story of the fig tree.  He comes looking for fruit and finds none.   He is ready to have it cut down.  The gardener says to wait a year as he tries to save the fig tree by trying all the remedies possible.  Moses tells us about all the things that God did for the people of the Exodus and how poorly they responded.  They were not allowed to enter into the Promised Land because they doubted.  Christ talks about the people killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them.  Christ tells us they were not guiltier than everyone else who lived.  Christ urges us to repent before something bad happens to us.  Now is the acceptable time to do the right thing.  All our life is a preparation for doing the right thing now.

Action

When we hear the voice of God, we need to respond by doing good deeds and avoiding evil ones.  Our actions are where God works in our lives.   Charity keeps us tuned into what God Is doing in our lives.  We need to work as if God was doing all that we try to do.  It is the goodness of our actions that brings God into what we do.  Wherever there is love, God is there.  The love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.  Wisdom, knowledge, counsel and understanding are the gifts of the spirit that can guide us in our choices of what we are doing.  We trust the spirit to lead us.  What we do for the least one of our brothers and sisters is what we do for Christ.  Our action should be a response to what needs doing around us.  We can never stand secure before the tree of the Cross until the fruits of our actions like the burning bush speak the presence of the Lord in our lives.