Homilies

3rd SUNDAY OF LENT: REPENTANCE AND BEARING FRUIT

IT HAS BEEN said that there are two kinds of suffering: the suffering that people inflict to one another and the suffering that happens to us because of circumstances such as accidents, natural calamities, etc.  On the one hand, the newspapers and television show us in full the suffering that people inflict to one another.  We do not have to look far to know about it: the struggle between Christians and Muslims here in our country, or the continuing war in Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.  On the other, there are also sufferings that befall us just like the example that Jesus gives about the people who died in Siloam.  Disasters and calamities happen everywhere and all the time.  We have gone through it the last few months…the flood, earthquake in Haiti and Chile. And there are still the sufferings that people experience in their sickness and finally death. These happen to us and we also do not have answers to them.  

However, in the gospel of Luke for this Sunday, Jesus gives an answer to our questions on sufferings.  The murdered Galileans and the victims of the fallen tower were not punished by God which was the general view of the people in those times: ‘Whoever dies in such circumstances were punished by God’.  Even now we often have this kind of mentality:  ‘We get what we deserve’.  But our Lord denies this kind of mentality and further tells us that our God is not a God of wrath and vengeance.  We could not make God responsible for the evil that people do or for the suffering that befall us.  He asks us to take responsibility for the suffering that we do to one another.  Repentance is His call.  Put an end to those killings through all the wars and conflicts.  

And what do we do with the suffering that happens to us, all the calamities and disasters that we encounter, the deadly diseases that inflict us.  Has God anything to do with it?  If it is not a punishment, how then should we see it?  Unfortunately we do not get an answer to the question regarding unwanted and innocent suffering.  We only have the most incomprehensible words of our Lord in the cross:  "My God, why have you forsaken me?"  Did our Lord really felt that the Father has left Him?  Was it the end for all the sense and meaning of life? In this loneliness and emptiness, many of us would have cried out in the same words:  Where is God?  And most of the time we do not get an answer.  In agony and pain, we can cry out the same words of our Lord…and trust that God is really there and allow us hopefully to say what our Lord in his final moments said:  ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit’.
  
It is not easy to have this kind of trust and surrender…nor will it put an end to the suffering we inflict to one another.  It is perhaps for this reason that Luke goes further with the story of the fig tree which tells us about our God who is merciful and compassionate.  That story suggests that we must bear fruit, not only in our relationship to God, but also in relation to others.  Thus the call to repentance is also a call to have faith in people…..to trust and to be patient to them.  It is for us a call and invitation to become like Him, so that we may also bear fruit.  

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