Daily Reading
First Reading
Ephesians 4:7-16
But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it is said,
“When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive;
he gave gifts to his people.”
(When it says, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.) The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.
Psalm
Psalm 122:1-2, 3-4ab, 4cd-5
I was glad when they said to me,
“Let us go to the house of the Lord!”
Our feet are standing
within your gates, O Jerusalem.
Jerusalem—built as a city
that is bound firmly together.
To it the tribes go up,
the tribes of the Lord,
as was decreed for Israel,
to give thanks to the name of the Lord.
For there the thrones for judgment were set up,
the thrones of the house of David.
Gospel Reading
Luke 13:1-9
At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”
Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”
Reflection
Friends, today’s Gospel includes the parable of a fig tree that bears no fruit.
This is a standard trope in the theological literature of Israel: The tree that bears no fruit is evocative of the moral person who bears no spiritual fruit. Every single person has a mission: to be a conduit of the divine grace into the world. Planted in God—think of Jesus’s image of the vine and the branches—they are meant to bring forth the fruits of love, peace, compassion, justice, and nonviolence.
And notice that this should be effortless. The closer God gets, the more alive we become. But the mystery of sin is that we resist the invasion of God; we prefer to go our own way; we cling to our own prerogatives and our own narrow freedom. And the result is lifelessness. It feels like depression, like your life is going nowhere—in Dante’s language, like being “lost in a dark wood.”
In Jesus’s parable, the one caring for the tree begs the owner for one more chance to manure the tree and hoe around it, hoping to bring it back to life. But if no life comes, the tree will be cut down. This is the note of urgency that is struck over and again in the Bible. We can run out of time. We can become so resistant to God’s grace that our leaves dry up. This is not divine vengeance; it is spiritual physics.
So don’t be afraid of God! Surrender to him.