Third Sunday of Lent
March 23, 2025
Exodus 3:1-8a, 13-15; Psalm 103: 1-2, 3-4, 6-7, 8, 11.; 1 Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12; Luke 13:1-9
When I was growing up, I remember that my father really enjoyed gardening. He absolutely loved picking the harvest and preparing it into something delicious. Around spring, he would go to the store and get seeds to begin growing his squash, jalapeno, watermelon and tomato plants. At the end of the season, the produce was abundant. I remember that he would often times produce the best and biggest vegetables that I had ever seen. But to cultivate the ground and care for the plants required a lot of work, work that paid off at the end. He would always be attentive to any drastic weather changes that could kill off his plants or any pests that would harm the produce. But he would he would see the fruit of his labor in abundance. In today’s Gospel, our Lord offers us an image of this.
Christ gives us a parable of a fig tree. A man goes to get fruit from his fig tree and it has not produced any fruit. Due to this, he asks the gardener to cut down the fig tree. However, the gardener requests that he be allowed to cultivate the ground and to fertilize it so that it can bear fruit in the future. It not, he will cut it down. This is very similar to another account in the gospels when our Lord goes in search of fruit on a fig tree and he finds none; our Lord curses the fig tree for not producing fruit and the fig tree withers and dies. The sterility of the fig trees in both accounts are important to note. My dear brothers and sister, we see the importance of fertilizing and cultivating the ground so as to produce much fruit.
The fig tree that we see in both stories that I have mentioned represents the spiritual sterility of Israel. This, however, not only applies to fruitless Israel, but also to us. In the gospel of John, our Lord reminds us that he is the vine and that we are the branches. All that remain in our Lord bear much fruit and those who do not, they will be cut off and thrown into the fire. For us, we should always strive to produce much fruit by remaining with our Lord. However, we much know how to properly cultivate and fertilize the ground of our soul in order to produce much fruit. The seed that the Gospel of Christ plants into our hearts must first germinate. This is done by us practicing the faith. We cultivate and fertilize our hearts by the practice of hearing the word of God, praying and especially participating of the holy sacrifice of the Mass. However, we not only allow the word of God to penetrate into our hearts, but we should also allow it to act in our lives. It is completely useless to constantly hear the word of God, to study sacred scripture and event to come to Mass, if we do not allow these experiences to change our lives. Pope Francis put this beautifully when he states, regarding the Eucharist, that “[the Eucharist] transforms our life into a gift to God and to our brothers” and that the Eucharist puts us “in tune with the heart of Christ”. These, my dear brothers and sisters, are the fruits that the true Catholic must produce. During lent, we are presented with the importance of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Considering the importance of the disciple to produce fruit, we should consider in what ways we can produce fruit during this Lenten season. Prayer should be foundation of our lives. Without it, we have no fertile soil that we can depend on to produce fruit. Fasting allows us to cultivate and fertilize the ground. Almsgiving, i.e. giving to the needy, becomes the fruit that we are asked to produce. I invite you, my dear brothers and sisters, to consider in what ways you are cultivating and producing fruit in your life of faith during this Lenten season. Let us not come before the Risen Lord empty handed on Easter, but let us come with much fruit.
Second Sunday of Lent
March 16, 2025
Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18; Psalm 27:1, 7-8, 8-9, 13-14.; Philippians 3:17—4:1; Luke 9:28b-36
A few years ago, I was given the great privilege to go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land with some parishioners. One of the holy sites that we visited on the pilgrimage was the church on top of Mount Tabor. The church was beautiful and there were some ruins surrounding the church. I remember that our guide took us to a particular ruin that had a slab of stone on the ground. According to some traditions, the slab of stone is considered the exact stop where Our Lord was transfigured before his apostles. The reason was because it was the highest point of the mountain. We do not know the exact spot where our Lord stood and was transfigured before his disciples. Nevertheless, it’s interesting to consider that for some, the tradition that our Lord stood at the highest spot to reveal his glory shows the attempt to prepare his disciples to experience his suffering, the “lowest” point in our Lord’s life.
It is important to note what happened in the verses before the gospel that we read today. Just prior to the Transfiguration, Jesus began to reveal to His disciples that He would suffer greatly, be rejected by the elders, be killed and then rise on the third day. This caused much fear for the disciples as they grappled with this unsettling revelation from our Lord. Matthew and Mark even include that Peter tried to discharge our Lord from experiencing his passion, which resulted in a rebuke. Our Lord, however, remains firm and even prepares three of his disciples for this great event. The Gospel today tells us that our Lord takes Peter, John and James to the top of the mountain where he was transfigured before them. Moses and Elijah appear and Our Lord converses with them regarding his passion. Filled with joy, Peter exclaims, “Master, it is good that we are here; let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah”. We see so many connections between the scene of the Transfiguration and the agony in the garden. First, Peter, James and John are chosen for both events. Secondly, the three apostles fall asleep as the event is taking place. Thirdly, both events take place in a mountain: Mount Tabor and Mount of Olives. These similarities help us understand what our Lord is doing. He is preparing Peter, James and John to witness his passion by revealing his glory. By seeing a glimpse of his glory and divinity, the three apostles were better equipped to understand the extent and the depth of the redemptive work of Christ in his suffering, death and resurrection. However, as we see later on, all the disciples leave except for John. Although Peter and James were witnesses of the Transfiguration, the raising of the daughter of Jairus, and the agony in the garden, they were not prepared to accompany our Lord through the passion.
My dear brothers and sisters, oftentimes we find ourselves in the same place as Peter and James. Our Lord gives us moments throughout our lives when we can experience the glory of the Lord, his peace and his loving presence as Peter, James and John experienced in Mount Tabor. These moments are of great joy and we can find ourselves wanting to make our tent in the presence of the Transfigured Lord. However, when we are asked to accompany our Lord in his passion by taking up our crosses and follow him, things can get difficult. In the Gospel, we see that Peter desires to make three tents to host our Lord, Moses and Elijah. To make a tent is to desire to remain at a place for an extended period of time. When we experience the joy and the glory of Christ in our lives, we are given this opportunity to make our tents and to dwell there. This is to give us the opportunity to constantly remember the glory of Christ even in the midst of suffering. Those cherished moments can become an oasis during the difficult moments in life. However, as followers of Christ, we are also called to encounter our Lord and to follow him in our sufferings. The saints frequently emphasized the importance of uniting our sufferings with the passion of Christ. To live as good disciples of Christ is to live with, in and through Christ in all aspects of our lives. One cannot experience the resurrection without experiencing the passion. One cannot experience the passion without first encountering the glory of the Transfigured Christ.
-Father Miguel Mendoza
First Sunday of Lent
March 9, 2025
Deuteronomy 26:4-10; Psalm 91:1-2, 10-11, 12-13, 14-15; Romans 10:8-13; Luke 4:1-13
In my first year of seminary, I had the great privilege of doing a 30-day silent retreat as the capstone of the entire first year known as the Spirituality year. I recall that the first week of the retreat was focused on praying and establishing a foundation of who I am before God. This foundation is important because it provides a firm foundation to fall upon when prayer becomes dry and sterile, when life becomes difficult, and when the cross becomes heavy. So, what is the foundation that I was taught in my 30-day silent retreat? The answer is simple. You and I are God’s beloved children. Based on this truth, the rest of the retreat was focused on deepening this truth and living according to this truth.
In today’s gospel, we see this identity challenged. If we look at the previous verses of the Gospel of Luke, we see that Our Lord accepts to be baptized by John the Baptist in the river Jordan. St. Luke notes that during this important event, the Holy Spirit descends upon Our Lord in the form of a dove and a voice from heaven is heard proclaiming Christ as the beloved Son of the Father, in whom the Father is well pleased. In today’s Gospel, which chronologically happens right after the baptism of Christ, Our Lord is led by the Spirit to the desert. After forty days of fasting and prayer, the tempter comes to Our Lord. It is important to note how the devil begins his temptations. “If you are the Son of God,” he says, “command this stone to become bread.” The first and the last temptation begin with this phrase: “if you are the son of God…” The temptations begin by trying to bring doubt into this important identity as Son of God. Our Lord, firmly grounded in his identity as the beloved Son of God, responds to each temptation focusing on his relationship with the Father. He knows the value of the Father’s word, the importance of the Father’s place in his life, and the total trust and confidence in his heavenly Father.
My brothers and sisters, in a similar fashion we are often tempted. Temptations almost always seem to be an echo of the devil’s temptations that we see in the gospel today. Temptations in general are always a way to persuade us that a cheap and temporal good is better than the Ultimate Good, i.e. God himself. Temptations offer an opportunity to find our identity, our belonging, and our worth in other things. In the temptations of Christ, the devil presents three things that offer such opportunities: the flesh, the world and ourselves. By tempting Christ to turn the stones into bread, the devil offers the pleasure of our flesh. In our own lives, we often see this in the form of bodily pleasures that pull us away from God. The second temptation that the devil presents to Our Lord is the presentation of the kingdoms of the world and their riches. When the bodily pleasures do not seem enough, we can at times fall victim to the desire for the earthly things. The world always contradicts the gospel message and the life in Christ is always seen as something repulsive. But for the true son and daughter of the Father, the world and everything in it is vain and empty. The last temptation presents a great pleasure in the ego. When the flesh and the world cannot satisfy us, temptations are presented to our pride. Pride, which is the mother of all sin, can easily enter into the heart of the follower of Christ and corrupt it. It’s possible that we can try to find our identity in the things that we do, in who we are without Christ, in what we achieve and in how we are loved by others. We can often try to seek out the admiration of others based on our qualities and our identity that does not include our identity in Christ. But we must always remember that we get our worth, our identity, and our inexhaustible love from God alone. Our essential and fundamental identity sprouts from this. In Christ, we are beloved sons and daughters of a loving and good God. That is enough.
-Father Miguel Mendoza
