Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons: 28th February 2016

THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT 2016

It's easy to slip into that old religious trap of equating bad things as the consequence of sin and good things as a blessing and reward from God. You hear this view used as an argument against religion from those who see religious faith as a negative influence and force in life. They turn it round to ask, how can God allow suffering, if God is good then why war, famine and disease?

The important thing about Jesus is that he pushes us away from this type of debate and instead focuses on the utter graciousness and mercy of God in these good and bad situations. Yes, good things happen to very bad people and very nasty things happen to innocent little ones, that alas happens to be life whether religion is present or not!

Jesus uses the two incidents in Luke 13, the massacre of innocent Galileans by Pilate (a reminder that he was not some philosophical thinker about truth but a tyrant who murdered others) and the collapse of a tower in Siloam on eighteen people as a reflection on the randomness of life's events! Bad and good things happen!

Jesus recognizes the fragility of life, he notes its capriciousness and the problems of suffering it brings, but he never blames God for any of it. Instead he warns us about the suddenness of things and asks us to be ready always for that meeting in death with God, to repent of our sins and to seek mercy.

Trusting and hoping in the promises of God is not easy, but the little parable of the barren fig tree points to a bigger question. The gardener pleads that the tree be given another chance, even in the face of unproductivity. We are left wondering, will it be fruitful, and will it be spared?

So too with ourselves, Jesus point to us, points to those unending chances we have with God, for even in the unfairness of life there will be a divine resolution, in the end, the patient and merciful God of the fig tree will open the door to everlasting joy, the fruit of the Kingdom planted in us!

'Anyone who acknowledges his own sins is greater than one who raises the dead by his prayer. Anyone who mourns over the state of his soul for an hour is greater than one who embraces the world in contemplation. Anyone to whom it has been given to see the truth about himself is greater than one to whom it has been given to see angels.' Isaac the Syrian.

Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Chaplain for the Melkite Greek Catholics in Britain