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3rd Sunday in Lent (Year C)
LENT – A TIME FOR CHECKING OUR ATTITUDE TO GOD
It is said that familiarity breeds contempt. Familiarity can certainly breed presumptuousness – the tendency to take things for granted. The gospel this week warns us about being presumptuousness towards God – taking God for granted. Lent is a time when we are invited to revisit our attitude to God and ensure that we are humble enough to accept God as our Lord and guide.
The gospel begins with two stories unique to the gospel of Luke, in which Jesus challenges the widely held presumption among the leaders and people of Israel that tragedy was the effect of sin and God's wrath. Jesus makes it clear to his audience that the tragedies which befell the Galileans and the people crushed by the tower at Siloam did not happen because they were great sinners and had been cursed by God. Jesus did not offer an explanation as to why these tragedies happened. Rather, in the tradition of the prophets before him, he used these events to warn the people about the urgent need for repentance – that no one could be sure when their time on earth, and hence, their opportunity for repentance, would end. Moreover, just because things in a person's life were going well did not mean that he or she need not repent. The need for repentance was ongoing and universal.
In contrast to these two tragedies, the story about the fig tree is included in the gospels of Matthew and Mark as well as Luke. However, in Matthew and Mark, Jesus merely curses the tree as unfruitful. Only in Luke does Jesus give the fig tree another chance to bear fruit. Luke presents a God who, while demanding repentance, is also remarkably patient and merciful. This is not the hard God promoted by the religious leaders and the people. This is a God who “hangs in there” with sinners when common sense would suggest that they be abandoned. This is a God who yearns that people discover how much God loves them, how noble they can be and how much God yearns for their freedom from sin. [Fr Paul]
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