[stephenkhoo]

03 March, 2013, 3rd Sunday of Lent
VAIN CONFIDENCE IN GOD’S MERCY CAN PREVENT US FROM RECOGNIZING THE OPPORTUNITIES FOR CONVERSION
SCRIPTURE READINGS: Ex 3:1-8a, 13-15; 1 Cor 10:1-6, 10-12; Lk 13:1-9

Many of us do not take sin and conversion seriously in our lives. Many people today are immune to sin or are indifferent to sin and its consequences. In fact, for the modern man, sin does not exist, not even human weakness. Such a situation has even become part of the culture of our ordinary Catholics. Indeed, the greatest crisis facing humanity today is moral decadence. Repentance is difficult today because the sense of sin is disappearing from the conscience of our peoples. This is the consequence of religious indifference and secularization. When man becomes more pragmatic and relativistic in outlook, he loses the sense of sin.

Hence, the more insidious danger is that many of us are living an institutionalized and ritualistic faith. We live under a false sense of security, thinking that just because we frequent the sacraments, we are guaranteed of a place in the kingdom. The reality is that a ritualistic and superstitious faith alone cannot save us unless we live out the meaning of the sacraments we receive, be it baptism, Eucharist, reconciliation or our vocation. Many people say sin no longer exists. Many rarely go to confession. Many receive the Body of Christ in Holy Communion even in a state of mortal sin. They do not feel any remorse in committing the greatest sin of sacrilege to the body of Christ. This ignorance of sin is due to an indifferent and weak conscience, so hardened it no longer hears the interior voice of God. Indeed, the prophets likened such people to rotten fig trees. The barren fig tree in scriptures is a symbol of the desolation and calamity of Israel due to her unfaithfulness to God. So when we are not bearing the fruits of our faith in Christ, we too are that barren fig tree!

Indeed, this was the same attitude of the people of the Old Testament and the Christians in Corinthians. St Paul reprimanded the Christians for being divisive in spite of the fact that they were baptized in Christ and had received the Eucharist. By so doing they were no better than the Israelites who went through the Exodus experience, namely, crossing the red sea prefiguring Christian baptism; and being fed with manna and water from the rock, recalling the Christian Eucharist. Hence, St Paul urged the early Christians to learn from the mistakes of Israel instead of allowing the same consequences to repeat in their lives.

It is within this context that the call to repentance is made. The liturgy wants us to consider the mistakes of others as the way God wants to reach out to us. Grace is present even in disgrace. When Jesus cited two recent incidents that happened to His contemporaries, one a political-religious calamity and the other a natural accidental disaster, He wanted to go beyond simply assigning blame to those who were killed. He was not interested in speculating whether the fate of the Galileans whom Pilate put to death was on account of their sins or whether the eighteen men who were tragically killed in the Siloam tower incident “were more guilty than all the other people living in Jerusalem.”

Indeed, the message of Jesus is clear. He wanted to go against the Jewish mentality of that time which presumed that the good do not suffer and those who suffer calamities were being punished for their sins. For Jesus, punishments are the means by which God channels His grace to us, inviting us to reflect on our own situations so that we can repent of our ways and live a more fruitful, loving and meaningful life. This is where the grace of God is present even in our sinfulness.

Truly, the more important reality is the lesson we can learn from such incidents. We are reminded that our life is never predictable. We can die any time. Tragedies are not simply the consequences of people’s mistakes and evil actions. More importantly, they bring to consciousness our own fragility and finiteness. In other words, we are called to confront our own death and the way we live our lives. Surely, we do not want to find ourselves unprepared when that day comes. For the way we live is the way we will die. So what is more important is that we are called to apprehend the possibility of a spiritual and eternal death.

Unfortunately, in the face of such tragedies, we escape from confronting ourselves by engaging in intellectual discussion about sin and suffering like the contemporaries of Jesus. Instead of thinking about our own sins, we speculate on the sins of others. This is simply a defense mechanism to avoid getting in touch with our true selves. Indeed, we all like to gossip and talk about the things that we read in the newspapers, the divorce between so and so; the criminal breach of trust committed by this prominent person, the sexual indiscretions of another etc., but have we ever wondered that in many ways we are also living in sin? Instead of speaking about others’ sins, we should be concerned with our own.

If we have not, then we would have failed to realize that the suffering and tragedies of life are graces from God to wake us up to repentance. What wake-up calls have we received? Perhaps we lost our job; or were caught engaging business impropriety; or charged with stealing or dishonesty; or suffered the loss of our loved ones. Such trials are really the means by which God wants us to come to self-realization. Indeed, Paul puts it aptly, “All this happened to them as a warning, and it was written down to be a lesson for us who are living at the end of the age.”

The tragedy of Israel was that they never learnt from their mistakes. They saw the goodness and power of God in the wilderness. They were witnesses to the wonders of God at work in their lives. God provided and cared for them. Instead of being faithful to the Lord, they turned to idolatry and sin. God freed them from the slavery of the Egyptians but they chose to be slaves once again of idols and false gods. As a consequence, they forfeited the opportunity to enter the Promised Land, which is a symbol of the abundance of life. Jesus Himself warns us, “Unless you repent you will all perish as they did.” If not, a greater disaster will befall us. Indeed, time and time again, God is inviting us to respond to His invitation to life and love.

So the lesson of today’s liturgy is clear. We must not procrastinate further in conversion for it might be too late. By not amending our lifestyle now, we might not get a second chance. This is the thrust of the gospel passage. St Luke wants us to realize that repentance is a necessity for today and not to be postponed until tomorrow. We must live a life of vigilance, always ready to answer the call when it comes. It is true that Christ is merciful. He understands us when we fall and are unproductive. Like the gardener, he pleads to the Father to give us one more year. Sure, the Father will wait for us but there is always the day of reckoning.

Sinful habits and excuses for unrepentant sins have clear consequences for our lives. We will not only suffer spiritual barrenness but spiritual death as well. The Lord in His mercy has given us grace and time to turn away from sin and the worship of false gods in our lives. But that time to turn away from sin is right now, not tomorrow because there is no tomorrow. When tomorrow comes, then it will be another tomorrow. Don’t say, “Tonight, I will have my last fling.” It will never happen if we do not decide to change now. If we delay, we might discover that grace has passed us by and our time is up. So how can we respond to His grace here and now?

We have the sacraments. God is actively working in us so that we can be fruitful. God is the careful gardener, always ready to give life to us by nourishing us with the food of eternal life in baptism and the Eucharist. That is what St Paul told the early Christians. We only need to have the right dispositions to receive the sacraments so that we can live the demands of the Christian life. We also have the sacrament of reconciliation. We must therefore make use of the means given to us to grow in holiness. If we truly recover our baptismal commitments and our love for the Eucharist, both in the celebration of the Word and the Eucharist itself, we will come to taste the mercy and love of God. Truly, the Lord is not asking something from us that we cannot do. He is only asking us to be faithful to the graces we have received. All He asks is that we be open to His grace and love so that we can bear fruits of love, justice and peace in our lives.

Yes, we are called to repent, which is not merely to change our behavior. Rather it means a change of attitude and not simply actions. We are called to be like Moses to come to the burning bush and face the holiness of God. Only when we are before God, then we know how sinful we are. We are called to enter the mystery of God’s mercy symbolized by the Holy Ground of which Moses took out his sandals. By coming to hear him once again and experience His power and love, we will then be like Moses, renewed and empowered to live out the call of God in our lives and be delivered from the sins that enslave us.

Of course, conversion is an ongoing process. We must not give up just because the going is difficult. Like the Israelites, we must continue with the Exodus experience of learning how to let go. Being imperfect as we are, we must renew our commitment daily. We must begin anew each day to renew our baptismal vows. If not, we would be uprooted like the fig tree. Lent precisely is the time when we act upon our initial commitment so that we can be sure of our destiny and goal.