While writing this homily, I could not help but think of the many innocent people in Ukraine, who are suffering and dying from the relentless and merciless bombings of the Russian army.
Today’s gospel mentions two tragic incidents, one caused by human cruelty, the other by an accident. The first concerns a group of Galileans who were summarily executed in the temple on the orders of Pontius Pilate. The second recounts the fall of the tower of Siloam which claimed the lives of eighteen persons.
The popular belief then was that misfortunes strike the victims because of their sins (much like our own belief in “gaba”). Jesus instead posed the question of whether the victims of Pilate’s cruel order were greater sinners than all the other Galileans, and whether the victims of the accident in Siloam were more guilty than everyone else in Jerusalem.
Answering his own question, Jesus said, “By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!” For Jesus, the two tragedies were not a matter for speculation about the sins of the victims, but an invitation to his listeners to put their lives in order. They were at the same time a warning, both serious and urgent, “Repent or perish.”
The whole point of Jesus was for everyone to realize the need for conversion. In the face of tragedies that happen, it is of no use to blame the victims. What is more useful is for us to look into ourselves and be aware of the precariousness of our own life. That unless we repent, we run the risk of suffering the same fate of the victims and perish like them.
To repent is more than just to regret or feel guilty about a fault committed in the past. Biblical scholars say that the original Hebrew derivative of the verb to repent connotes the idea of “return.”
More than an emotion, it is a decision to turn away from where one is heading and move towards God. The point is that while not all suffering may necessarily be a punishment from God, all who turn away from God tread the path to self-destruction.
Pope Benedict once said that when we put God out of our life, we lose life itself. “In summary: conversion overcomes the root of evil, which is sin, even if it cannot always avoid its consequences.”
While the gospel seems dark and depressing at the beginning, it ends with good news. The parable of the fig tree is a happy reminder that God readily gives us a second chance – a chance not just of one year, but of a lifetime. And since we do not know how long our lifetime lasts, the urgency of conversion becomes even more imperative.
Finally, God gives us not only the time for conversion but every means needed. No less than the gardener himself (Christ) volunteers “to cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it [that] it may bear fruit in the future.*