3rd Sunday of Lent (C) 03-11-07

Scripture Readings
First Exodus 3:1-8a, 13-15
Second 1 Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12
Gospel Luke 13:1-9

Prepared by: Rev. Peter John Cameron, O.P.

1. Subject Matter

• God empowers us for salvation with his holy Name

• Theodicy: why God does not prevent evil and suffering; the redemptive meaning of suffering

• The unexpected, mysterious ways that God makes himself evident in our lives

• The possibility of personal fruitfulness; the change that Christ looks for/expects in us as a
result of our union with him

• The danger of procrastination

2. Exegetical Notes

• “The rock was Christ” – St. Ambrose: “This surely referred not to his divinity but to his flesh,
which flowed over the hearts of the thirsting people with the perpetual stream of his blood.”

• “Whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall” – St John Chrysostom:
“Anyone who relies on himself will soon fall. For the way in which we stand in this world is
not secure and will not be until we are delivered out of the waves of this present life into the
peaceful haven of eternal rest.”

• “If you do not repent” – Luke on repentance: see 3:3, 8; 15:7; 24:47.

• “The Galileans may had died by the malice of some human being; the eighteen
Jerusalemites by chance (they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time). But
 the fig tree will die expressly because of inactivity and unproductiveness. In the long run this
becomes ‘the greater sin’” (J. Fitzmyer).

• “A fig tree absorbs a specially large amount of nourishment and hence deprives the
surrounding vines of their needed sustenance” (J. Jeremias).

• This parable about the barren fig tree in its import is redolent of Christ’s discourse about the
vine and the branches (Jn 15:1-10; see also Mic 4:4 and Joel 2:22)—among Christ’s final
words the night before he dies at the Last Supper: “Apart from me you can do nothing.”

3. References to the Catechism of the Catholic Church

(ABOUT “I AM WHO AM”):

• CCC 205: “God calls Moses from the midst of a bush that burns without being consumed….
He is the faithful and compassionate God who remembers them and his promises; he comes
to free their descendants from slavery. He is the God who, from beyond space and time, can
do this and wills to do it, the God who will put his almighty power to work for this plan.”

• CCC 206: “In revealing his mysterious name, YHWH (‘I AM HE WHO IS’, ‘I AM WHO AM’ or
‘I AM WHO I AM’), God says who he is and by what name he is to be called. This divine
name is mysterious just as God is mystery. It is at once a name revealed and something like
the refusal of a name, and hence it better expresses God as what he is—infinitely above
everything that we can understand or say: he is the ‘hidden God’, his name is ineffable, and
he is the God who makes himself close to men.”

• CCC 209: “In the reading of Sacred Scripture [by the people of Israel], the revealed name
(YHWH) is replaced by the divine title ‘LORD’ (in Hebrew Adonai, in Greek Kyrios). It is under
this title that the divinity of Jesus will be acclaimed: ‘Jesus is LORD.’”

• CCC 210: “After Israel's sin…the LORD passes before Moses and proclaims, ‘YHWH,
YHWH, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and
faithfulness’; Moses then confesses that the LORD is a forgiving God.”

• CCC 211: “The divine name, ‘I Am’ or ‘He Is’, expresses God's faithfulness: despite the
faithlessness of men’s sin and the punishment it deserves, he keeps ‘steadfast love for
thousands.’ By going so far as to give up his own Son for us, God reveals that he is ‘rich in
mercy.’ By giving his life to free us from sin, Jesus reveals that he himself bears the divine
name: ‘When you have lifted up the Son of man, then you will realize that I AM.’”

• CCC 213: “The revelation of the ineffable name ‘I AM WHO AM’ contains then the truth that
God alone IS…. God is the fullness of Being and of every perfection, without origin and
without end. All creatures receive all that they are and have from him; but he alone is his very
being, and he is of himself everything that he is.”

• CCC 446: “In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the ineffable Hebrew name
YHWH, by which God revealed himself to Moses, is rendered as Kyrios, ‘Lord.’ From then
 on, ‘Lord’ becomes the more usual name by which to indicate the divinity of Israel's God. The
New Testament uses this full sense of the title ‘Lord’ both for the Father and—what is new—
for Jesus, who is thereby recognized as God Himself.”

• CCC 2666: “But the one name that contains everything is the one that the Son of God
received in his incarnation: JESUS. The divine name may not be spoken by human lips, but
by assuming our humanity the Word of God hands it over to us and we can invoke it: ‘Jesus,’
‘YHWH saves.’ The name ‘Jesus’ contains all: God and man and the whole economy of
creation and salvation. To pray ‘Jesus’ is to invoke him and to call him within us. His name
is the only one that contains the presence it signifies.”

(ABOUT THEODICY):
• CCC 164: “Even though enlightened by him in whom it believes, faith is often lived in
darkness and can be put to the test. The world we live in often seems very far from the one
promised us by faith. Our experiences of evil and suffering, injustice and death, seem to
contradict the Good News; they can shake our faith and become a temptation against it.”

• CCC 272: “Faith in God the Father Almighty can be put to the test by the experience of evil
and suffering. God can sometimes seem to be absent and incapable of stopping evil. But in
the most mysterious way God the Father has revealed his almighty power in the voluntary
humiliation and Resurrection of his Son, by which he conquered evil…. It is in Christ's
Resurrection and exaltation that the Father has shown forth ‘the immeasurable greatness of
his power in us who believe’.”

• CCC 309: “If God the Father almighty, the Creator of the ordered and good world, cares for
all his creatures, why does evil exist? To this question, as pressing as it is unavoidable and
as painful as it is mysterious, no quick answer will suffice. Only Christian faith as a whole
constitutes the answer to this question: the goodness of creation, the drama of sin and the
patient love of God who comes to meet man by his covenants, the redemptive Incarnation of
his Son, his gift of the Spirit, his gathering of the Church, the power of the sacraments and
his call to a blessed life to which free creatures are invited to consent in advance, but from
which, by a terrible mystery, they can also turn away in advance. There is not a single aspect
of the Christian message that is not in part an answer to the question of evil.”

• CCC 310: “But why did God not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it? With
infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world ‘in a state of journeying’
towards its ultimate perfection. In God's plan this process of becoming involves the
appearance of certain beings and the disappearance of others, the existence of the more
perfect alongside the less perfect, both constructive and destructive forces of nature. With
physical good there exists also physical evil as long as creation has not reached perfection.”

• CCC 313: “‘We know that in everything God works for good for those who love him.’ The
constant witness of the saints confirms this truth.”

• CCC 314: “We firmly believe that God is master of the world and of its history. But the ways
of his providence are often unknown to us. Only at the end, when our partial knowledge
 ceases, when we see God ‘face to face’, will we fully know the ways by which—even through
the dramas of evil and sin—God has guided his creation to that definitive sabbath rest for
which he created heaven and earth.”

• CCC 324: :The fact that God permits physical and even moral evil is a mystery that God
illuminates by his Son Jesus Christ who died and rose to vanquish evil. Faith gives us the
certainty that God would not permit an evil if he did not cause a good to come from that very
evil, by ways that we shall fully know only in eternal life.”

• CCC 385: “No one can escape the experience of suffering or the evils in nature which seem
to be linked to the limitations proper to creatures: and above all to the question of moral evil.
Where does evil come from? ‘I sought whence evil comes and there was no solution’, said
St. Augustine, and his own painful quest would only be resolved by his conversion to the
living God. For ‘the mystery of lawlessness’ is clarified only in the light of the ‘mystery of our
religion.’ The revelation of divine love in Christ manifested at the same time the extent of evil
and the superabundance of grace. We must therefore approach the question of the origin of
evil by fixing the eyes of our faith on him who alone is its conqueror.”

(ABOUT FRUITFULNESS)
• CCC 156: “The miracles of Christ and the saints, prophecies, the Church's growth and
holiness, and her fruitfulness and stability ‘are the most certain signs of divine Revelation,
adapted to the intelligence of all’; they are ‘motives of credibility’ (motiva credibilitatis), which
show that the assent of faith is ‘by no means a blind impulse of the mind.’”

• CCC 519: “Christ did not live his life for himself but for us.”

• CCC 521: “Christ enables us to live in him all that he himself lived, and he lives it in us.”

• CCC 736: “By [the] power of the Spirit, God's children can bear much fruit. He who has
grafted us onto the true vine will make us bear ‘the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.’ ‘We live by the Spirit’;
the more we renounce ourselves, the more we ‘walk by the Spirit.’”

• CCC 755: "The Church is a cultivated field, the tillage of God. On that land the ancient olive
tree grows whose holy roots were the prophets and in which the reconciliation of Jews and
Gentiles has been brought about and will be brought about again. That land, like a choice
vineyard, has been planted by the heavenly cultivator. Yet the true vine is Christ who gives
life and fruitfulness to the branches, that is, to us, who through the Church remain in Christ,
without whom we can do nothing.”

• CCC 2074: “Jesus says: ‘I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in
him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.’ The fruit referred to
in this saying is the holiness of a life made fruitful by union with Christ. When we believe in
Jesus Christ, partake of his mysteries, and keep his commandments, the Savior himself
comes to love, in us, his Father and his brethren, our Father and our brethren. His person
becomes, through the Spirit, the living and interior rule of our activity”
4. Patristic Commentary and Other Authorities

• St. Augustine: “Almighty God, because he is supremely good, would never allow any evil
whatsoever to exist in his works if he were not so all-powerful and good as to cause good to
emerge from evil itself.”

• St. Augustine: “Let no one who neglects to keep the divine commandments deceive himself
by protesting his love for God.”

• St. Basil the Great: “Through the Holy Spirit we are restored to paradise, led back to the
Kingdom of heaven, and adopted as children, given confidence to call God "Father" and to
share in Christ's grace, called children of light and given a share in eternal glory.”

• St. Augustine: “The fig tree is the human race. For the first man after he had sinned
concealed with fig leaves his nakedness.”

• St. Gregory the Great: “Our Lord came three times to the fig tree; but yet he complains that
for three years he found no fruit, for there are some wicked men whose hearts are neither
corrected by the law of nature breathed into them, nor instructed by precepts, nor converted
by the miracles of his incarnation.

• St. Gregory Nazianzen: “Let us not strike suddenly, but overcome by gentleness, lest we cut
down the fig tree still able to bear fruit, which the care perhaps of a skillful dresser will
restore.”

• St. Augustine: “To dig around the tree is to teach humility and patience, for the ground which
has been dug is lowly.”

• St. Gregory the Great: “He who will not by correction grow rich unto fruitfulness, falls to that
place from whence he is no more able to rise by repentance.”

• St. Cyril of Alexandria: "And what then is this extra year? But plainly this fourth year, this
time subsequent to those former periods, is that in which the Only-begotten Word of God
became man, to stir up like some husbandman by spiritual exhortations the Israelites who
had withered away in sin, digging round them, and warming them, to make them fervent in
spirit.

• St. Cyril of Alexandria: "He promised, if they would believe in him, and now at length
become fruitful trees, that he would give them life and glory, the grace of adoption, the
communion of the Holy Spirit, and the kingdom of heaven."

• St. Cyril of Alexandria: "But that it was doomed to be cut down, on account of its utter
barrenness, the blessed John the Baptist also declared in these words: 'Behold the axe is
laid at the root of the trees: every tree, therefore, that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn
down, and cast into the fire' (Lk 3:9)."
• St. Catherine of Siena: To "those who are scandalized and rebel against what happens to
them": "Everything comes from love, all is ordained for the salvation of man; God does
nothing without this goal in mind."

5. Examples from the Saints and Other Exemplars

• St. Thomas More, shortly before his martyrdom, consoled his daughter: "Nothing can come
but that that God wills. And I make me very sure that whatsoever that be, seem it never so
bad in sight, it shall indeed be the best."

• Dame Julian of Norwich: "Here I was taught by the grace of God that I should steadfastly
keep me in the faith…and that at the same time I should take my stand on and earnestly
believe in what our Lord shewed in this time - that 'all manner [of] thing shall be well.'"

6. Quotations from Pope Benedict XVI

• “Each accepted pain, no matter how obscure, every silent suffering of evil, each act of
inwardly overcoming oneself, every outreach of love, each renunciation, and every turning in
silence to God—all of that now becomes effective as a whole: Nothing that is good goes for
nothing. Against the power of evil, whose tentacles threaten to surround and lay hold of
every part of our society, to choke it in their deadly embrace, this quiet cycle of true life
appears as the liberating force by which the Kingdom of God, without any abolition of what is
existing, is, as the Lord says, already in the midst of us (Lk 17:21).”

• “What strengthens our faith, what remains constant, what gives us hope, is the Church of the
suffering. She stands, to the present day, as a sign that God exists and that man is not just a
cesspit, but that he can be saved…The Church of the suffering gives credibility to Christ: she
is God’s success in the world; the sign that gives us hope and courage; the sign from which
still flows the power of life, which reaches beyond mere thoughts of success and which
thereby purifies men and opens up for God a door into this world. So let us be ready to hear
the call of Jesus Christ, who achieved the great success of God on the cross; he who, as the
grain of wheat that died, has become fruitful down through all the centuries; the Tree of Life,
in whom even today men may put their hope.”

• “The Church must be ready to suffer. She must prepare space for the divine, not through
power but through spirit, not through institutional strength but through witness, through love,
life, and suffering: and in this way she must help society to find its moral identity.”

• “Christ truly accepts us and takes us up, so that we ourselves become active with his support
and alongside him, so that we ourselves cooperate and join in the sacrifice with him,
participating in the mystery ourselves. Thus our own life and suffering, our own hoping and
loving, can also become fruitful, in the new heart he has given us.”
7. Other Considerations

Moses would never have been attracted to the bush at the mountain of Horeb if not for its
wondrous fruit: fire. As Moses draws near to it, God makes this proclamation: “I have
witnessed the affliction of my people. I know well what they are suffering. I have come down to
rescue them.” In the Gospel parable, the owner of the fig tree draws near to the tree for an
opposite reason: its branches are empty; the tree bears no fruit; thus it should be cut down. But
the gardener, exhibiting the vision of Moses, sees beyond the appearance of barrenness in the
fig tree. He recognizes a possibility for fruitfulness. This is how Jesus looks at us. And just as
Moses approached the burning bush expecting something wonderful to happen—“I must go over
to look at this remarkable sight!”—so does Christ expect to find rich fruitfulness in our lives
because the encounter with his Presence makes it possible. He has witnessed the affliction of
us, the barren fig tree. He knows well we suffer; he has come down to rescue us. It is for us at
this moment of Lent to put aside:
(a) fatalistic doubt (“I’m never going to change”);
(b) deadly presumption (“At least I’m not as guilty as those who were crushed by the
Siloam tower”). St. Paul warns: “Whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care
not to fall.” To this the Lord adds, “If you do not repent, you will perish as they did”;
(c) our lack of expectation—Christ himself cultivates us and fertilizes us with his own life.
When we live certain of the fruitfulness that God intends for our life—when we exercise
our freedom to realize that divine design—then we change. We become as attractive and
awesome as the burning bush that leads those in the desert to the saving Presence of the
merciful God.

Recommended Resources

BENEDICT XVI, POPE, Benedictus: Day by Day with Pope Benedict XVI Yonkers: Magnificat,
2006.

CAMERON, PETER JOHN, To Praise, To Bless, To Preach: Spiritual Reflections on the Sunday
Gospels—Cycle C Huntington: Our Sunday Visitor, 2000

JOHN PAUL II, POPE, On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering (Salvifici Doloris) 1984

TOAL, M.F. Editor, The Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers Swedesboro: Preservation Press,
1996

VON BALTHASAR, HANS URS, Light of the Word San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993