3rd Sunday of Lent- C
March 23, 2025 11am
Our Lady of Grace Parish, Parkton
Greater Sinners?
Approximately 1.2 million people in our country have died from Covid.
Would we say that they died from this because they were greater sinners – greater than us? I think we would not and should not say this.
Or, how about the people who died in the collapse of that condo building near Miami several years ago.
Would we say that they died because they were greater sinners – greater than others? Again, I think we would not and should not say this.
Jesus’ Answer
In today’s gospel, Jesus uses two similar examples.
He refers to some people who were put to death by the cruel tyrant Herod. And then he refers to some people who were killed when a building collapsed and fell on them.
And Jesus asks: do you think that these people were greater sinners than others? And he answers his own question: “By no means! [Absolutely not!]
Jesus’ point is that we are not to look at others and try to gauge their degree of sinfulness. Instead, we are to look at ourselves.
The Season of Lent is intended to get us to do just that. Jesus wants us to be aware of our shortcomings, our wrongdoings, our sinfulness, our need for growth or fuller conversion.
Threefold Conversion
One of our Catholic theologians, Father Ronald Rolheiser, has commented on this gospel passage.
Father Rolheiser is a religious order priest, an Oblate of Mary Immaculate, and is on the faculty of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio. He recognizes that all of us who are here have an initial commitment to God or Jesus.
But Father Rolheiser also sees three movements for our coming to a fuller conversion or faith commitment.
First, we need to move from being bystander to participant.
So, instead of just lamenting the darkness in our world, we point out persons or situations of light. Instead of just seeing the need of some people for clothing and food, we give what we can afford to help them.
Instead of just talking about prayer, we actually pray. So, we need to move from being bystander to participant.
And second, we need to move from judging to repenting.
We can judge ourselves as better and others as less in subtle ways. For example, we might think or even say, “I am less rigid and more understanding than she is.”
Or “He is much more impatient with the children than I am.” So, we need to move from judging to repenting and that means that we focus on our own sinfulness.
And third, we need to move from thinking that we are unloved to knowing that we are loved.
This means that we move away from an image of God as conditioning his love on our earning it. Instead, we really accept the fundamental statement of the Scripture that “God is love” and Jesus’ words “I call you my friends.”
This will lead us away from just obeying commandments because we are afraid of God and move us toward responding as fully as possible to the gospel as our part of this wonderful relationship. So, we need to move from thinking we are unloved to knowing that we are loved by God.
Conclusion
Okay! A fuller commitment to the Lord – that’s what this gospel and Lent are about.
Moving from being bystander to participant, from judging to repenting, from thinking ourselves unloved to knowing we are loved. And that last movement really explains the last part of today’s gospel.
In this particular parable, Jesus is not the owner but the manager of the orchard. The owner was only interested in what the fig tree could produce.
The manager was interested in the tree itself. He cared for the tree and believed that his care for it would end up with good results.
That’s how Jesus or God relates with us: patient, caring, forgiving, loving. That’s the God to whom we respond in this Lenten season.