Let us be reminded of the words of the Psalmist, “The Lord is kind and merciful.” We see this mercy played out through the image of the fig tree. Instead of cutting it down it is shown mercy and given time to produce fruit. The fig tree serves as an image from the Old Testament that represents Israel. As the Lord commanded of them earlier in this Gospel, “Bear fruit that befit repentance.”
This Gospel serves as a reminder that at any moment we may parish and in return we will have to atone for our sins. We are thus being called towards an encounter with repentance. Repentance is not a one time change of heart, but is a life long process. It can be easy to regress once we come to know Christ to our old ways of life, but we must continue to move forward with the confidence of faith.
The Israelites were given so much when they were liberated from their slavery, but they still cried out against God that it would be better to turn back towards their old way of life. So too do we often stumble about and fear to let go. God’s grace is always sufficient if only we would place our trust in Him and realize that this were so. There is always the temptation that we need something more in order to be holy, but in all actuality all that we need is God and His grace.
Let us remember that “the Lord is kind and merciful” and thus use the time of this Lenten season to cultivate our life towards Him. It is Christ who we must allow to cultivate our heart by allowing Him to uproot everything that gets in the way of us following after Him. In other words we must trust in the Lord and realize that there is nothing which is impossible with Him on our side. As our Pslamist had stated, “He pardons all your iniquities, heals all your ills.”
For your reflection I encourage you to reflect upon the ways in which you are in need of the healing touch of the Lord. With this knowledge placed before your sight realize that hope is always found if we place our trust in the Lord and realize that He is “kind and merciful.” The last thing that we should do is remain passive because time will pass and we will never hand our life over entirely to Christ. As Cardinal Newman has stated, “to live is to change, and to be perfect means to have changed often.”
If good fruit is to be found upon this fig tree we must realize this urgency and need to hand over our life to Christ. Day by day we should be reminded of what was begun within us at our baptism and strive to return towards that glorious day by how we order our life on this earth. Victory over sin and death was won for us upon the cross and so may we trust that “the Lord is kind and merciful” as we are lead towards the interior conversion of the Gospel. This is indeed the lesson of the fig tree.
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