The Homily for the 3rd Sunday of Lent, Year C: 2025

Little Zachary was doing very badly in math. His Mom had tried everything...tutors, mentors, flash cards, special learning centers etc, but did not work. So, in the last effort, Mon enrolled Zachary into a local Catholic school. After the first day, little Zachary came home with a very serious look on his face. He didn't even kiss his mother hello. Instead, he went straight to his room and started studying. Books and papers were spread all over the room. She called him down to dinner. To her shock, the minute he was done eating, he marched back to his room without a word, and in no time, he studied as hard as before. His mother was amazed at his change. This went on for some time, day after day, while the mother tried to understand what made all the difference. Finally, little Zachary brought home his report Card. He quietly laid it on the table, went up to his room and hit the books. His mother looked at the report card and to her great surprise; little Zachary got an 'A' in math. She could no longer hold her curiosity. She went to his room and said, 'Son, what was it? Was it the nuns? Was it the school?' Little Zachary shook his head and replied: No. 'Well, then,' she asked, was it the books, the discipline, the structure, the uniforms? WHAT WAS IT?' 
Little Zachary looked at her and said, 'Well, on the first day of school when I saw that guy was nailed to the plus sign and hung on the wall, I knew those nuns weren't fooling around.'

The crucifix is a “wake up call” of Little Zachary. What are your thoughts and your reactions when you see or hear about earthquakes, fires, tornadoes, or diseases, etc? Jesus’ parable of the fig tree reminds us just that. The Jews wanted to know what Jesus thought about Pilate’s horrible act to the Jews.

Jesus used the parable of the fig tree to teach them and us a truth about human life. Everyone on earth has his/her day to leave this world. So, how we die is not as important as how we live our life on earth. God is the owner, Jesus is the gardener, and fig trees are us. The analogy is: The Father tells the Son: time is up for the world to end. But the Son begged the Father for more time in order for humans to change their heart. Jesus gave us a warning: If we do not repent and believe in the gospel of Christ, we will be perished like those victims. God is kind and merciful. He does not care how much grace and resources he has to pour out for us to grow and bear fruits. If we don’t bear good fruits while we are still on earth, we will be sorry.

Looking at our time, I see many many people are having the same way of thinking as the Jews in Jesus’ time: ignorance and indifference to the gospel. For example: we all went through the pandemic. We heard many people died. So had people changed after the COVID? Had people come back to God? Not really. In my observation as a priest, I like to share with you that many people also lost their Christian faith when they met a human crisis like death in the family, divorce, or losing a job, etc. I don’t know why, but clearly those reactions are against Jesus’ teaching. Jesus taught us: human crisis, family crisis, or any kind of crisis should bring us to our knees to pray and repent. But it seems like it is not a case for our time.

Dear Friends in Christ, Repent and believe in the gospel. This is the message for you and for me. There are some questions about our faith we can examine this week: Do you believe in Jesus’ teaching about eternal life (heaven) and eternal death (hell) after this earthly life? Do my faith bear good fruits for God's kingdom or do we just let our selfishness, pride or human pleasures run wild? Let us repent and change our life to the gospel when we still have time. Sacraments of Reconciliation are necessary in our conversion process. We have to identify our sins and turn to God’s mercy. We have to open our hearts to God’s forgiveness and sanctifying grace and let him change us to whom we are supposed to be. The parable of the fig tree is my wake-up call every day, is it yours? Jesus once said, “The wise is the one who listens to the word of God and acts on it.” Every day, we have to pray: His Will be done, not ours.