In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Beloved in Christ, the Gospel today begins with the news of the day. Some people come to the Lord to tell Him about a tragedy: Pilate has massacred Galileans while they were offering sacrifices, so that their blood was mixed with the blood of their offerings. The Lord adds another piece of news Himself: a tower in Siloam has collapsed, killing eighteen people. Then He asks the question everyone was thinking: “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all perish in the same way!” (Luke 13:2-3).
The Wrong Question About Disasters
We are not so different from those who brought the news. When a disaster strikes, we look for an explanation, and very often we look for someone to blame. Either the victims must have deserved it, or God must be unjust. The Lord rejects both answers. The victims were not worse sinners than anyone else. We all live in a fallen world, where violence and accidents and death are part of the common lot of mankind. The only wise response to such events is not to speculate about the guilt of others, but to examine ourselves and to repent, so that we are ready to meet our Master whenever He calls us.
This is a sobering teaching, yet it is also a merciful one. The Lord does not use tragedies to frighten us. He uses them to wake us up. Every funeral, every accident reported on the news, every sudden loss is a reminder that our time is not unlimited, and that the question that matters is not “why them?” but “am I bearing fruit?”
Three Years and One More
To make this point, the Lord tells the parable of the fig tree. “A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard. He came to look for fruit on it, but found nothing. He said to the vine dresser, ‘Behold, I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree for three years, and found none. Cut it down! Why does it waste the soil?’” (Luke 13:6-7).
The fig tree was first of all an image of Israel, to whom the Lord came looking for the fruits of repentance during the three years of His public ministry. Yet the parable is written for us as well. Each of us is planted in the vineyard of the Lord, in the Church, watered by the Mysteries, fed by the Scriptures, surrounded by the prayers of the saints. The Master comes looking for fruit. He has every right to expect it.
Then the vine dresser intercedes: “Lord, let it be for this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit, fine; but if not, after that, you can cut it down” (Luke 13:8-9). Many Fathers see in this vine dresser the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, our great High Priest, who intercedes for us before the Father and asks for more time. This is the meaning of every year, every day we are given: it is a reprieve, a gift of patience. As the Catechism of the Orthodox Faith teaches, citing the Apostle Peter, the time we are given is a blessing, because the Lord “is long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).
We should notice that the vine dresser does not only wait. He digs around the tree and he fertilizes it. He works. Sometimes the digging hurts: trials, losses, disappointments loosen the hard soil around our hearts. Sometimes the fertilizer is not pleasant either. Yet all of it is meant to help us bear fruit before the time of patience is over.
The Fruit of Mercy
What fruit is the Lord looking for? The Church answers today by placing before us two great saints of mercy, commemorated on the same day: Saint John the Merciful, Patriarch of Alexandria, and Saint Martin, Bishop of Tours.
When Saint John became Patriarch of Alexandria in the seventh century, one of his first acts was to ask for a list of “his masters.” His clergy did not understand. He explained that he meant the poor, because they alone could truly help him and open to him the Kingdom of heaven. The list contained thousands of names, and he provided for all of them. His biographer, Leontius of Neapolis, tells how a wealthy man once gave the patriarch a costly blanket. John sold it the next day and gave the money to the poor. The donor bought it back and gave it to him again, and again John sold it. Finally, the saint is reported to have said, with a smile, that they would see who would tire first. In his youth, John had seen in a vision a radiant maiden crowned with olive branches, who told him that she was Compassion, and that whoever had her as a friend would have access to the King.
Saint Martin, centuries earlier, was still a young soldier and a catechumen when he met a freezing beggar at the gate of the city of Amiens. Having nothing else, he cut his military cloak in two with his sword and gave half to the beggar. As his disciple Sulpicius Severus records in his Life of Saint Martin, that night Christ appeared to him in a dream, wearing the half cloak, and saying to the angels that Martin, still a catechumen, had clothed Him with this garment.
These saints understood what the Catechism teaches so clearly: “the poor are thus, for the eyes of faith, living icons of Christ.” They also understood the thunderous words of Saint Basil the Great, quoted in the same Catechism: “The bread you hold back belongs to the hungry; the coat you keep in your chest belongs to the naked; the shoes rotting in your possession belong to the barefoot; the silver you have buried belongs to the needy.” Saint Martin did not keep his coat. Saint John did not keep his blanket.
This is the fruit the Master seeks: not merely good intentions, not merely correct ideas about God, but a life transformed by repentance into a life of mercy. As the Apostle James writes, “mercy triumphs over judgment” (James 2:13). The Catechism explains that the mercy promised to the merciful is nothing less than “deliverance from everlasting condemnation at the judgment of God.”
Saint Paul, in today’s Epistle, reminds us that “the day of the Lord comes like a thief in the night,” and that “we belong to the day” (1 Thessalonians 5:2, 8). Let us therefore not sleep. Let us thank the Lord for another year, another day, in which the vine dresser has dug around us. Let us examine ourselves rather than judge others. Let us bear the fruit of repentance, which is mercy, so that when the Master comes looking, He may find on our branches something worthy of His patience.
Through the prayers of our holy fathers John the Merciful and Martin of Tours, may the Lord have mercy on us and save us, for He is good and loves mankind, and to Him we give glory, to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.