My Dear People, 

I want to thank all the St. Vincent de Paul Society and the Children of our Lady Prayer Group members who went to St. Paul’s in Arcadia this week through the “Holy Doors” pilgrimage. St. Paul’s is one of the churches through which we may gain graces (indulgences) during this Jubilee year. I would like to encourage the rest of the parishioners to also take advantage of this opportunity during this Jubilee year.

In Luke’s Gospel, there is an account of Jesus’s teaching “travel narrative,” during the long journey toward Jerusalem that began shortly after the Transfiguration. Jesus refers to some particular tragedies that had taken place and were fresh on the minds of his contemporaries. The historian, Josephus, our main source for the history of the times, does not record either of these events, but the atrocities against the Galileans mentioned here are in keeping with Pontius Pilate’s known character, (at least with his heavy-handed style of governance early in his tenure as governor), before the unrest and dissatisfaction under his rule began to weaken his position with the imperial court, which wanted a Judean governor who would keep the populace quiet and taxable.

Jesus is rebuking a tendency among the Jews, including His disciples, to see one’s fate in death, whether favorable, as a divine assessment of the righteousness of one’s life. In the kingdom of heaven, things are reversed. Those who die in persecution may, in fact, be “blessed” (Matt 5:10-12). The fig tree is, in the first instance, a symbol of the City of Jerusalem, which Jesus is about to visit. When He comes, He will not find the fruit of repentance there. As a result, the city will ultimately be destroyed in 70 AD. 

On the other hand, the fig tree is a type of each one of us and a warning to us. The Lord is gracious and merciful, as the earlier readings have proclaimed, but there is a practical limit to the time this “window” of grace is open to us. We only have this short life to take advantage of God’s mercy and begin to bear the fruit of repentance. 

What does it mean to bear fruit? In the New Testament, “fruit” are commonly the virtues that demonstrate interior righteousness as in the “fruit of the Spirit”: love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control (Gal 5:22). However, “fruit” may also refer to reproducing one’s faith in others, that is, in bringing others to salvation. This may be the sense of “fruit” in John 15-16.

We can take St. Paul’s word from the Galatians as almost an explanation of what Jesus is telling us in the parable of the fig tree: “I say, walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

Now the works of the flesh are plain: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passion and desires.” (Gal 5:16-23).

In this week’s Gospel, the Church is urging us to take advantage of God’s mercy in this holy season of Lent to truly change our lives, to be converted and to bear fruit pleasing to God. 

Our practices of self-denial and mortification are ways by which we “crucify the flesh with its passions and desires” so that we can truly be free to live up to those virtues that scripture identifies as the fruit of the Holy Spirit. [portions from Reflections on the Sunday Readings by Dr. John Bergsma]

Yours in Christ, 

Fr. Vincent Clemente