Third Sunday of Lent: Year C 2016

DOCTRINE AND FAITH
(Exodus 3,1-8.13-15; 1 Cor. 10,1-6.10-12;   Luke  13,1-9: third Sunday of Lent:  Year C  2016).

   The readings of this Sunday are challenges to us. The first reading talks about the incident of the burning bush, an event that provided the occasion in which God revealed his personal identity to Moses. God, first of all, revealed himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob: as a faithful God, that is to say, the God who maintains his promise. God reveals himself as the spontaneous liberator of the people of Israel:  I have seen the miserable state of my people in Egypt. I have heard their appeal to be free … Yes I am aware of their suffering. I mean to deliver them out of the hands of the Egyptians. God laid the burden of leading his people towards freedom on Moses. God assured him of full success and revealed his personal name to him: I am who am. In this first reading we note that the initiative to free the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt came, first and foremost, from God. We are aware of the prodigies God worked in Egypt in order to bring them out and how he protected and cared for them in the desert until they reached the Promised Land. Paul, in today’s 2nd reading, teaches that the salvation of the newly converted Corinthians (and ours by extension) is the fruit of God’s action and love. In reviewing God’s relationship with the people of Israel, Paul noted how God showed preference to Israel and how he bestowed favours on her. Yet, due to presumption, she fell out of God’s favour. Paul was, therefore, warning the new converts of the Church of Corinth to desist from manifesting the same presumptuous mentality of assured salvation. This was because there was always the possibility of falling and losing one’s soul. Paul warns all of us, the Christians of Nigeria as well: The man who thinks that he is safe must be careful that he does not fall. One of the questions we have to ask ourselves this Sunday is: Am I presuming that my salvation is assured, by the fact that I am baptized into the Catholic Faith? Being baptized is already an enormous privilege: it means being inserted into the mystical body of Christ, being incorporated into Jesus Christ and being the son or daughter of God. In this Sunday, and the rest of Lent, God challenges us to review our relationship with him. Am I just a nominal member in the body of Christ or am I committed by the way I live my Christian life in the circumstances of my daily life?  How do I co-operate with the grace of God so as to bring to fruition the salvific action which God had already initiated at baptism?

    The gospel reading also challenges us Catholic Christians in Nigeria. In our daily life, it is noticed that the principle of retributive justice is often evoked. This principle holds that the just and good people are rewarded with good things and the wicked are punished with bad things in this world. Therefore, when any one suffers misfortune, what comes to the mind of people is that he/she must have done something wrong and that is why God is punishing him/her with some misfortune. Even when one’s conscience was clear, then comes the idea of retributive justice taking its toll generation after. That is why, any misfortune would be interpreted as the punishment arising from the sins of our forebears who died generations and generations before. To prevent the misfortune from going on further, people seek for the so-called powerful men and sometimes women of God to heal their family roots. Such mentality was in vogue both in the Old Testament and New Testament, as the gospel reading makes us understand. The people who approached Jesus had the same mentality. For them, the people whom Pilate killed and those who died, following the fall of the tower, were paying for their sins. Jesus corrected this idea: There is no link of cause and effect between sin and misfortune, between personal sin and sickness. There are no where, in the teaching of Jesus, where he holds that the good people will be rewarded while the wicked punished in this life. Reward and punishment are issues for the next life not for this present earthly one.

    Having put to rest the idea of retributive justice, Jesus affirms that conversion to the Lord is the important issue that his disciple should pursue: … but unless you repent you will all perish as they did. Conversion entails the resolute decision to be always free from sin and to always behave as Jesus would want and put into practice his teachings. This serious duty of ongoing conversion is not to be postponed from day to day without incurring great risk. The two incidents of the sudden deaths in the gospel reading warn against any waste of time so as not to be caught by surprise and unprepared at the coming of the Lord.  There is also a theological fallacy that circulates among us and robs us of the rich mercy of God. That is, we often think that we are such  hardened sinners that we hold firmly that we cannot change our way of life for better and what is left to us is to drift along in our accustomed situation of hopelessness. In such situation, we think that God is tired of us. At other times we hold that it is impossible for God to pardon all our sins. Jesus corrects this notion we have of God with the parable of the unproductive fig tree. The owner for three years has been waiting for its fruit. He was willing to wait for another year before uprooting it. By this parable, Jesus reveals that Our God is a God of mercy and compassion and is willing to pardon our sins. He is patient with us and waits for us to change and be converted to him. This is one side of the coin. The other side is that God’s patience and mercy should not be abused, for surely the time to give account of our lives will come. Happy Sunday! +John I. Okoye  

(graphics  added by blogger)