Gospel Reflection for the Third Sunday of Lent, Year C
Luke 13:1-9
We often see the world through a lens of fairness. The good are rewarded, at least eventually, and the wicked punished. We certainly expect that the people we don’t like or disapprove suffer because they had it coming. All this is really just an excuse to see ourselves in a better light because at least, we don’t suffer from those problems. In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that this reasoning is wrong, and that we should look at ourselves.
God has been incredibly generous and patient with us like the gardener was with the fig tree, not just once on the Cross. He has united us to himself in Baptism, forgiven us our sins whenever we turned to him in Confession, and fed us with his own Body and Blood in the Eucharist. Have we received God’s generosity as we should? Do we recognise that it is indeed God forgiving us in Confession and God feeding us in the Eucharist? Or has it become a routine, or even something unimportant which we mostly ignore?
Everyone we encounter is created in the image and likeness of God, redeemed by Jesus Christ, and called to holiness. Are we helping them come closer to Jesus by the way we respect them and treat them? Can people look at us and see God working to change us? Are our lives no different than they would be if we had never met Jesus?
We are to ask ourselves these things continually, but especially in Lent. During this season, Jesus gives us the grace to look into our own lives and take our sins to him in confession. There, he also gives us the grace to forgive others as he has forgiven us. The three practices of Lent also help us bear good fruit. By fasting, we sacrifice passing pleasures in order to be more generous with God and our neighbour. In prayer, we discover and draw closer to God. Through alms-giving, we are generous to others just as God has been generous to us in Christ. If, through these things, we can begin to bear good fruit, we will no longer need to value ourselves only on our supposed superiority to those we think are worse sinners than us.