Saturday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time
“He told them this parable: “There was once a person who had a fig tree planted in his orchard…” (Luke 13:21)
When you look out to the west from our refectory you can see our beautiful velvet ash tree. It started out thirty-some years ago as a little slip of a tree – maybe you could call it a ‘treelet.’ Over the years it flourished and provides us with delightful shade and a wonderful green canopy where we can watch the sun play in its leaves. A few years ago, a destructive beetle began attacking it. The attack began underground in the form of a huge grub which attacks the roots. Soon the tree began to lose life, and branches needed to be pruned from it to help it survive. Felip our groundskeeper applied a strong solution to kill the grubs and this year it is beginning to respond to the care. It still needs more tending but perhaps in time it can be saved with the continued cultivating.
Our ash tree is a lot like the fig tree in today’s parable. And we are like the parable, too! We’re planted in a particular soil or way of life in which we sink our roots into the rich soil of the Spirit and begin to grow branches and sprout leaves through our daily lives and circumstances. The branches and the leaves can be compared to the gospel values which the Spirit causes to grow in us and to which we must offer our ‘yes’ inwardly and by actions which show our resolve.
God is our gardener and he knows exactly what we need in order to grow into the person we are meant to be in his love. And here’s where it gets interesting… God digs deep around the tree, he aerates the soil through the Spirit and applies the fertilizer of circumstances and people that he sees we need in order to grow, places where we resist God and resist the struggle it is to yield to God’s tending of us. We all know what it is like when God urges us to let go of a grudge or forgive someone. And yet, if we are to follow the Gospel, it has to be. No one likes the roots of her or his being having to bear disturbance and learning to absorb nourishment and healing from the very indelicate thing called fertilizer. But, as today’s parable of the fig tree points out, it is the very thing we must yield to and let it be God’s chosen gift to bring about our growth and healing and to walk in the ways of the Gospel. Like our ash tree, if we don’t take the medicine into our being and cooperate with God to bring about the healing and growth we need, in time we will eventually succumb to the sickness.
Deeply living the Gospel will ask huge and seemingly insurmountable things from us. We all know and have experienced that. But we also know we can trust our Gardener. The Father sees what we need before we ask it. We can trust that he will bring to transformation all the stubborn, deeply-rooted judgments, attitudes and pride in us that need his care and the medicine of the Gospel. Then we can spread our branches and let our leaves play in the sun in whatever way God calls us. We can provide a canopy of humility and goodness under which anyone can find welcome , pull up a chair and rest.