22 October 2022
Saturday of the Twenty-Ninth Week in Ordinary Time
Today’s Gospel (Luke 13:1–9) offers us a series of images, which invite us to pray about our repentance and God’s mercy. In the first two images, Jesus invites us—the crowd—to consider the fate of the Galileans slaughtered by Pilate and those who perished under the tower at Siloam and to put ourselves in their shoes. Contrary to what we might think, we are not greater sinners than they, and we might easily have suffered their fate. It is a gruesome and sobering thought, one which underscores Paul’s point that “all have sinned” (Rom 3:23); as such, we are in desperate need of repentance.
The second image, contained in Jesus’ parable of the fig tree, both gives us hope and teaches us what repentance should look like. We can take hope because Jesus, the gardener, is merciful and will do all he can to bring fruit from us, the barren fig tree. And we know that our repentance should bear fruit—that is, it should result in concrete action and reform of life—since if it continues barren, it will eventually be cut down.
Today, let us ask God to give us a true spirit of repentance, one which bears fruit in concrete action in our lives, confident that his mercy and grace will bring forth that fruit in abundance.