Online Retreat
 


3nd WEEK OF LENT
March 7, 2010


By Maureen Wicken, Campus Minister, St. Mark’s College in Vancouver, BC

Readings: Exodus 3:1-8a, 13-15; 1 Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12; Luke 13:1-9

I saw Al again the other day. I had met him once before, a few months ago when a group of us went to the poorest neighbourhood in Canada to cook and serve a meal to Al and others who live in that area. One morning, Al began to chat and share his life with me. He talked about his wife- the soup was for her – and about her decades-long battle with mental illness. He told me about how he cared for her when she was very ill and about how many hospitals she had been in. He told me that many people had told him to give up and to let her go into care. After some convincing, his wife’s doctors permitted the use of medicinal marijuana that seemed to ease the symptoms of anger and distress for the first time in years. He told me he was committed to her and that even though he couldn’t help anyone else down on the streets, he knew his purpose was to help her and to love her.

In today’s gospel, people come to Jesus, as they always do, with a conundrum, one we still wrestle with today: “Do bad things happen to bad people?”

Jesus seems almost impatient with them. Jesus rejects the commonly held belief that sin had brought the slaughter upon them. Jesus doesn’t engage in theological debate over this problem that has haunted us over the millennia but instead abruptly turns our focus of concern inward by challenging us: If you do not repent, change your ways and take up the challenges of the Gospel, then the results will be equally horrible!

Jesus elaborates his point with the parable of the barren fig tree. This story strikes terror in the hearts of those of us who work in ministry: please God, let that not be me! Am I wasting the good soil, taking up room where someone else could flourish? Am I taking so long in planning my intricate programs of evangelization that a student out there is perishing while I dawdle? As John Shea says “We must change now or we will perish, not by a sudden tragic event but by our own failure to respond”. However, hope lies in the final line of the gospel: the gardener will give us one more chance to flourish, to receive the nourishment necessary for fruition to occur.

And my friend Al? He is no barren fig tree: he gives fruit to the love he bears for his wife, bringing love and hope out of a sad set of circumstances. And for us, maybe Lent 2010 is time to at last soak in all that manure and let it do something to us!

  • In what ways are you called to grow in this Lenten Season?
  • What might be preventing you from that growth?
  • How might you trust that God has heard your cries, and in new ways, has come to deliver you?