Dear Friends,
Soon it will be April and I will carefully unwrap my fig trees in the side yard. A gift from Katelyn’s grandfather, Louis, and all the way from Italy, they are a treasure, but they take a lot of work! Every fall I harvest the last figs, say a prayer, and then wrap them in layers of protection so that they survive another year. If I do my job right, as Grandpa taught me, they will blossom in spring anew!
You might say that God is what God is doing with us during Lent, making us anew! God is trying to get our attention, making an effort to get us to listen to Him more carefully. That is certainly what should be happening during this holy time. We have often heard that “God calls us”, but most often it is to a ‘calling’ such as the priesthood or religious life, but God also calls us all to a time of conversion and repentance, both important aspects of our Lenten journeys.
Lent, then, is a time for us to reevaluate our faith and where we are. Each of us should be striving for holiness, for a greater sense of how to serve God and one another through love and stewardship and a renewed dedication to making the things that matter prominent in our lives; letting go of the fleeting and the passing things. None of us can fully achieve the yearning to be free from sin, but we can be better people, stronger Catholics, more loving Christians. This all begins with an earnest pause; a time to stop and evaluate honestly: ‘Are we doing our best for God and others?’ The best way to resist temptation, to build a stronger spiritual life, to be better people is to first acknowledge our needs, our brokenness, and then seek God’s help in overcoming and healing.
During Lent we are all called to repent and to change. Jesus makes that call to repentance quite clear in this coming Sunday’s Gospel reading from Luke, which includes the Parable of the Barren Fig Tree. Scholars maintain that God is the owner of the fig tree, and He looks to each of us to bear fruit, to do good and righteous works. Are we? Do we? That, too, is so important to us during this Lenten period. God is very patient with us and God grants us this holy time to repent and to change our behaviors.
As Pope Francis recently stated, “Let us not waste this season of Lent, so favorable a time for conversion!” Is that what we are really trying to do?
Monsignor +Jim
Image: PAUL KLEE, FIG TREE, 1929.