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Pastoral Message From Father Len For the week of March 7, 2010
You? Me? Fruitful or Fruitless?
In today’s Gospel reading the parable of the fig tree includes a detail that will make sense to any gardener. If a tree or plant is not productive, it may benefit from having its roots stirred up and a little manure applied. In the same way, if we have stopped producing and growing morally, we may need to examine our root motives, untangle our lives from dead habits and bad influences. Prayer is a time to stir up roots. And even our pat failures can be a source of growth and insight. Just as old, decaying matter and manure nourish new plant growth, our old sins and past failures contain valuable insights and motivation for personal growth. Repentance acknowledges past failures and learns from them. Virtue that flows from experience is stronger than virtue that flows from simple innocence. Usually a fig tree takes three years to mature and bear fruit. If it is not producing fruit by that time, it will most likely be cut down. The fig tree in the gospel reading had already been given twice the allotted number of years that it takes to produce fruit, for the vineyard owner had allowed three more years to pass in fruitless expectation. The owner gives this tree one more chance. The vinedressers do some hoeing and manuring around it. Just maybe, the tree will produce once again. This parable applies to each of us. Every Lent God gives us one more chance to produce fruit in our lives, to reform our lives. All of us need to change things in our lives: watching too much tv; smoking/ eating too much and the wrong foods; criticize too much; too impatient and/or demanding; wasting time; unwilling to do our assigned tasks. Fr. Albert Cylwicki writes, “If year after year our lives are fruitless in personal growth, sterile in prayer and empty of good works, then, indeed, we are a barren fig tree. We can’t blame accidents or sickness or other people for our condition. We have to take full responsibility for our own lives.” Our lives are destroyed by our reluctance to accept difficulties and overcome them. Just think about such people as: Dorothy Day; Helen Keller; Ted Kennedy Jr. I personally know of people who were terminally sick with cancer; people who were double amputees; even now priests and brother visit the blind and those unable to speak. What makes our lives fruitless are not their circumstances or limitations, but our refusal to give it one more try and hoe our ground for one more year. God allows us the season of Lent, a time of grace; a time of forgivenesw; a time of reconciliation. We must make the necessary changes now—without delay. We have no guarantee that we will be here to observe Lent next year. Take time to pray, to pray, to pray. Look at all the time we spend in doing things not beneficial to our physical and spiritual welfare. Time to think about the poor, the victims of the recent earthquakes, the victims of AIDS; think of all the families destroyed and dissolved by a legal system that lacks compassion— “I was a stranger, and you welcomed me.” Lord, help me to become a fruitful fig tree! |
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