Third Sunday of Lent (C)
“If you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!”
Today, the third Sunday of Lent, the Gospel reading contains Jesus' call to penance and conversion. Or, rather, a demand for a change in our lives.
In evangelical language “To convert to” means to change not only our innermost attitude but our exterior style, too. It is one of the most employed themes in the Gospel. Remember that, before the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, Saint John the Baptist announced his mission to call others to conversion “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” And, immediately after, Jesus' preaching can be summarized with these words: “Repent, and believe in the gospel.”
Yet, today's reading has some characteristics of its own that call for faithful attention and an adequate response. It can be said that the first part of the reading, with the two historic references (the Galileans' blood shed by Pilate and the crumbling of the Siloam tower), contains a threat. It is impossible to describe it any other way! We deplore the two misfortunes —regretted and cried at that time— but Jesus Christ, most seriously, says to all of us: “—If you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!.”
This shows us two basic things. In the first place, the total seriousness of the Christian commitment. And, secondly, if we do not respect it, as God commands, the possibility of our death not in this world but, much worse, in the one to come: the eternal doom. These two stories of death in our text are but examples of eternal death that cannot be compared to the first one.
Each one of us will eventually find out how to face this demand of personal change. Nobody is excluded. But if this worries us, the second part of the reading should comfort us, instead. The “gardener”, who is Jesus, begs the owner of the vineyard, his Father, to wait another year. And, in the meanwhile, He will do whatever possible (and the impossible, by dying for us) so that the vineyard may bear fruit. That is, we change our ways! This is the message of Lent. Let us, therefore, take it seriously. The saints changed their ways by God's grace and inspire us to change too. Though late in his life, saint Ignatius of Loyola is one example.