What is it in human nature that we feel the need to blame the victims for their fate? In today’s Gospel, a very unfortunate incident is brought to Jesus’ attention. Roman soldiers had killed some Jews in the temple and then mixed their blood with the blood of their sacrifices. The talk of the town was that God punished the victims for sins they had committed. This prompts Jesus to mention the incident of 18 people who died when a tower in Siloam collapsed on them.
Because the awareness of death became a part of life when Adam and Eve rebelled against God, people in Jesus’ day thought there was a link between sin and suffering, believing sickness and death to be God’s punishment for sin. This conclusion sounds logical but Jesus quickly rejects it.
In the story of Adam and Eve, pain and death became their experience and ours not as a punishment for sin but as a consequence of their wrongdoing. The distinction between punishment and consequence is crucial if we are to grasp this gospel passage. This example illustrates the difference.
Driving his new luxury automobile, a drunken driver speeds down the street at 80 mph, fails to stop at a stop sign and runs into a power pole as he swerves to avoid a pedestrian. He suffers a broken leg and totals his new car. A judge then suspends his license and orders him to pay a hefty fine. The broken leg and the totaled car were consequences of this drunken driver’s actions but the fine and loss of his license are the punishments. Consequences flow from one’s action while someone else imposes the punishment. Suffering and death are not punishments from God for something we do. Rather, they are the consequences of our choices in life.
When my mother died, some people tried to console me with the line that her death was God’s will. I came to view her untimely death from a heart attack as a consequence of poor choices she made that impaired her health, not as a punishment from God.
God gives and sustains life. God also gives us free will so that we can freely love. Thus God cannot decide the manner or the time of our death. For the victims of any tragedy, for example, what Ukrainians are enduring now, I can’t believe that God would want people to suffer such a fate. Death strikes some people unexpectedly because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
None of us can predict our future. That death could happen unexpectedly is rarely considered yet that does happen. Don’t dismiss the possibility that you might die suddenly as have many victims of heart attacks, accidents or war. If death were to greet you unexpectedly, would you be ready?
That is the caution Jesus airs, not once, but twice in this Gospel. He is concerned about our eternal fate. Many of his listeners had the mindset that the absence of misfortune in their lives meant they were living virtuous lives pleasing to God. Rather than commending them, Jesus warns, “I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!”
The examples Luke uses of people dying unexpectedly are a sobering reminder that our time to respond to Jesus’ warning is here and now. In his letter, Paul cautions that not all the Israelites made it to the land of milk and honey. Instead, they “were struck down in the desert.” We are on a pilgrimage to the Promised Land, that place we call heaven. Our culture likes to think that everyone is going there, but Jesus cautions otherwise. Unless we acknowledge our sins and repent, we too may fall short of our desired destination.
The bottom line is this: where we spend eternity depends on our response to Jesus’ call to repentance. All of us stand in need of repentance. The most obvious advice I can offer is for you to celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation during this season of Lent. But there is more to reconciliation than a sacramental encounter with your confessor. Reconciliation also means setting ourselves right in our relationships with others and with God.
Jesus’ call to repentance is not just a call to turn away from evil; it’s also a plea to produce the fruits of good living. In his parable of the fig tree, Jesus is asking if our love of God is evident in the fruits we produce by loving and respecting others. Each day God gives us another chance to do so.
There are so many ways of showing love. How appreciative, how respectful, how loving are we toward others in our lives? We meet God by caring for the poor, the sick, the lonely and the elderly. Are we also making time to worship God by attending Mass and praying in our inner room? The warning about the unfruitful fig tree is not given to frighten us but to remind us that our time for doing good is limited. We can’t keep putting off good works indefinitely for someday there will be no tomorrow for us to get our act together.
Lent is the season for taking a hard look at our lives and asking how we stand before God right now. Like the fig tree, we are expected to produce good fruit. It isn’t too late to change our ways, but someday it will be.