Friday in the 29th Week of Ordinary Time, October 22, 2022

Luke 13, 1-9

Some people told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices. He said to them in reply, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were greater sinners than all other Galileans? By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did! Or those eighteen people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them— do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem? By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!”  And he told them this parable: “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.’”

This reading is interesting in part because of how it helps us to date the Gospel of which it forms a part.  The references to these historical events — the massacre by Pilate and the collapse of the tower of Siloam — are made in such a way that suggests Luke knew his readers were familiar with the details.  This is turn suggests that the Gospel was written not a long time afterwards, certainly before the Jewish Revolt in 67 A.D.  St. Luke’s quote of Jesus makes it sound like these two events occurred near the time in which he was speaking, though they cannot be dated with any certainty.

The Lord uses these events, in which disaster befell people suddenly and through no fault of their own, to teach about sin and death.  For the Jews, deaths of this kind showed that these people had sinned.  For example, in 2 Maccabees we are told that when burying the dead from a recent battle in which they had been victorious, Judas and his men found “under the tunic of every one of the dead . . . sacred tokens of the idols of Jamnia, which the law forbids the Jews to wear. And it became clear to all that this was why these men had fallen.  So they all blessed the ways of the Lord, the righteous Judge, who reveals the things that are hidden” (2 Maccabees 12, 40-41).  When the Lord concludes by saying, “But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did”, he means that the hidden sins of each person will act against them just as the pagan amulets acted against the Jewish soldiers wearing them.  This meant not only death, but shame.  This is a very useful teaching for us.  It helps us think about the very present danger of unrepented, unconfessed sin.  In modern terms, it is a time bomb that can go off at any time, for we do not know when we will be called to account by Almighty God, anymore than those killed in the battle, by Pilate, and by the fall of the tower did.

“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.”  This person would have planted the fig tree three to five years before and watched it grow and develop and mature, each year anticipating the time when it would produce fruit.  But when this tree had fully matured and was putting forth leaves, it was not producing fruit.  For three successive years after it should have been doing so, it was not.  One can understand the landowner’s frustration. Out of this feeling, he tells his gardener to cut it down.  He is sick of waiting for his own figs and he does not even tell him to plant a new fig tree somewhere else.  “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.”  The gardener’s answer is unexpected.  He has no stake in whether the tree gives fruit.  The landowner is not blaming him for the failure of the tree.  The gardener is speaking as though he is taking the side of the tree and that this is a personal matter for him.  He, in fact, intercedes for this tree that really can mean nothing to him.  In the parable, we are to imagine God the Father as the landowner, the Son as the gardener, and ourselves as the fig tree.  It flourishes, but it does not do the work for which it was created.  If we do not actively practice our faith and pray and work for the conversion of the world, we also will be “cut down”.  Now, at the time the Lord Jesus was speaking, he had spent nearly three years “looking for fruit” on the fig tree of Israel and was finding none, but he was interceding for it by promising to “cultivate” and “fertilize” it with his very Blood.  The persistent failure of the fig tree to produce fruit even after this is signified in the Lord’s failure to find fruit on a real life fig tree after he entered Jerusalem (cf. Matthew 21, 19).

Let us be careful to bear much fruit for Jesus, with the help of the grace he provides us, for the failure to do so is the equivalent, for us whom he has cultivated and fertilized with his Blood, of wearing a pagan amulet.