Reflection for Vigil of the Third Sunday of Lent 2010
6 March, 2010

by Joan Offenburger, OSB

Readings: Exodus 32:7-14, Luke 13:1-9

The readings we have just listened to share the approach they use in telling their story.

In each case there is an intermediary.
This person appeals to God’s justice to please include some patience. And when justice and patience mix, the result is God’s mercy.
Moses intercedes for the chosen people; the gardener, for the fig tree.
Those concerned get another chance at new life.

Each of the stories suggests the great intermediary whose selflessness we celebrate every Lent and Paschal time – in gratitude for the new life Jesus achieves for us, in hope that we may imitate that life. Please focus with me for a few moments on the Gospel story of the fig tree.

Trees and gardens are the setting for many Scripture stories, and for monastic tales as well. In the Gospel for this Sunday, the gardener knows what the fig tree needs; he explains how he will use his tools to help the tree to life, and though the master relents, there is a future time for evaluation included in the agreement.

Our own monastic hearts can also be lax and unproductive, in need of the light and understanding and work of a master gardener. No one says the gardener has an easy occupation, but Julian of Norwich suggests to us that everyone should be a gardener, and why this is a universal calling. Julian says:

“Be a gardener.
Dig and ditch,
toil and sweat,
and turn the earth upside down
and seek the deepness
and water the plants in time.
Continue this labor
and make sweet floods to run
and noble and abundant fruits to spring.
Take this food and drink
and carry it to God
as your true worship."

Benedict’s version of this program for a lifetime of monastic repentance and conversion is the very practical and challenging outline found in chapter 4: “Of the Tools of Good Works,” suggested to us as part of a communal meditation for this Lent. Our earth may really be turned upside down when, for example, we ask ourselves how we forgive, how we live the Beatitudes, especially perhaps as we hear Benedict say, “You must relieve the lot of the poor…Never turn away when someone needs your love.”

Thinking about our failings and of our many attempts over the years to ‘put on Christ’ might dishearten us, even cause us to be untrustful that any good can come from us. There’s a story that one of our older Sisters told on herself. She went to confession to Father Felix and lamented her impatience with the sisters she worked with on a daily basis, and how sharply she spoke to them. Father Felix listened to her tale, was quiet for a bit, and then said, “Sister, you’re improving. You were probably doing the same thing ten years ago, and didn’t even know it.” We need so much turning the earth upside down in the garden of our lives.

Another part of our communal Lenten meditation is Book II of Isaiah, called the Book of Consolation. Here, over and over we meet the tenderness of God. We use some of the same passages to welcome the promised Messiah of Advent; we hear the same message of repentance and hope in the passion story to help us anticipate the joy of holy Easter. Read chapter 54, and hear the promise of God to all us fig trees (and gardeners): “Raise a glad cry, you barren one who did not bear…the Lord calls you back. My love shall never leave you nor my covenant of peace be shaken, says the Lord who has mercy on you.”

If these nudges toward trust are not enough, we have each week the magnificent Sunday message contained in the Eucharist. The responsorial each Sunday of Lent carries the promise of God over and over. We are assured each Lenten Sunday of that promise to all of us that
The Lord is my light and my salvation.
The Lord is kind and merciful.
Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.
With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.

We hear all this together. On this holy ground, we are all gardeners and we share common tools. In a real sense, we are one another’s intermediaries trying to imitate the Christ who is the master gardener. We try to do good with God’s help, because without that help, we can do nothing. “Loving and forgiving are you, O Lord,” we sing, in the hope that we can respond to one another with the mind of Jesus and so walk together to new life every day. We fall down, and we get up, we fall down and get up. And Benedict reminds us, as the final tool of good works, “never lose hope in God’s mercy.”

© 2010 Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica
Atchison, Kansas