On this Third Sunday of Lent, a small group approaches Jesus to tell him of some Galileans who suffered a terrible fate at the hands of Pilate.  The Scriptures don't give us much context, or even much more information, but from Jesus' response, it seems as if those in the group were only trying to justify themselves: "Boy, they really got what was coming to them... must've done something really bad."  

Jesus picks up on it and shifts the focus: "Were they worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered thus?"  "And what about those eighteen who were crushed when the tower of Siloam fell... you think they were worse than all the rest in Jerusalem?"  Jesus refuses to let them play that game.  He allows for no self-justification.  "By no means!" He says.  "You will all perish as they did if you do not repent."  Jesus' words remind us of an essential truth about ourselves highlighted by John Paul II in the Theology of the Body: "The state of sin is part of 'historical man,' ... of Christ's interlocutors then, as well as of every other potential or actual interlocutor at all times of history and thus, of course, also of man today" (TOB 4:1).  None of us evades the state of sin that is part of Historical Man, and persisting in that state has only one end.  However, it is our very sharing in that state that leaves us "at the same time open to the mystery of the redemption realized in Christ and through Christ" (TOB 4:3).  For that reason, we will sing "O truly necessary sin of Adam... O happy fault" before the flicker of the Paschal Candle on Holy Saturday night.

Jesus points us toward that reality in the parable told in the second half of today's Gospel.  Choked by our sins, of course we bear no fruit.  The parable captures a certain immediacy - the exasperated owner of the fig tree is ready to cut it down, the judgment is close.  And there is the vinedresser, interceding on our behalf to save us: "Let it alone."  His action carries all of the imminence of the redemption that is so characteristic of our Lenten Season.  "Now is the acceptable time.  Now is the day of salvation," we heard St. Paul exhort on Ash Wednesday.  The time for delays has run out.

But we also see the tenderness of the vinedresser.  "Let me care for it," he pleads.  "Let me cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it."  "All it needs is a little attention."  Lent is that privileged time in the gentle but firm hands of the Master Gardener.  It's a time of pruning, yes, but it's also a time of intimate, personal attention.  The Lord's hands are upon you.  He cares uniquely for you.  May it be an opportunity for all of us to be shaped and formed, and so to bear much fruit.