March 20, 2022: Third Sunday of Lent

Lent reminds us that God is calling us to repentance.  God isn't necessarily out to punish us, as Jesus states in the Gospel, because He desires our salvation.  Yet we realize, when looking back in history, that if we stray from God, as the Hebrews did in the desert, we can suffer great consequences.

In some respects, the parable of the fig tree is illogical, that the gardener would want to keep tending to it in the hope that it will bear fruit.  Yet so God is with us.

God is truly mighty, as He declares to Moses, "I AM Who I AM."  He simply exists.  Yet He connects with us as His people, also declaring to Moses that He is the God of his forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  He is aware of the people's suffering in Egypt, and reaches out to rescue them.

So He does with us who are marred by sin.  Aware of such a gracious and merciful God, Who is truly a God of second chances, let's reach out to Him, repenting of our sins, so that we can bear great fruit, undergoing transformation so that we live to reflect His Holiness.

This set of readings was proclaimed 9 years ago when I attended Mass at St. Augustine Mission Church in Winnebago, NE, on the feast of the foundress, St. Mother Katharine Drexel.  Father Dave referred to the place as "holy ground", since a saint walked there.  Yet we, too, make the places where we trod holy ground when we repent, devote our lives to God, and display His Holy presence through our actions.