There is something profoundly sobering about Luke 13:1-9 that we must not
miss. Our Lord is speaking to us about the most serious matter in existence,
the salvation of our immortal souls.
The Question That Haunts Us
People come to Jesus with news of tragedy. Blood spilled in the temple.
Bodies crushed beneath fallen stone. And they want to know what we all want to
know when disaster strikes: Why them? What did they do to deserve this?
Jesus answers every comfortable assumption: "Do you think that these
Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they
suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all
likewise perish."
This is not a gentle suggestion. This is a divine warning spoken by the
Word made Flesh. Our Lord looks at us with eyes of infinite love and infinite
truth and says: You are not promised tomorrow. The ground beneath your feet
is not as solid as you think. Turn back to God while you still have breath.
The Weight of Three Years
Then comes the parable, and we must receive it with trembling hearts.
A man plants a fig tree. He comes seeking fruit, year after year after
year. Three years. Nothing. The tree takes up space, draws nourishment from the
soil, but gives nothing back. It is barren. Useless. The master's patience has
limits, as it must. "Cut it down."
How many years has God come seeking fruit from us? How many graces have
we received? How many Communions, how many Confessions, how many quiet moments
when the Holy Spirit whispered to our hearts, and we did nothing with them?
The fig tree doesn't argue that it deserves more time. It cannot speak.
It simply stands there, barren, awaiting judgment.
The Intercession That Saves
But here, here is where we glimpse the very heart of God.
The gardener intervenes. "Sir, let it alone for one more year, until
I dig around it and put manure on it. Then if it bears fruit next year, well
and good; but if not, you can cut it down."
The gardener pleads for the tree. He promises to labor over it, to give
it every possible advantage, to exhaust every means of bringing it to
fruitfulness.
This is Our Lord Himself. This is the Sacred Heart that beats with love
for us even when we are barren. He digs around our hardened hearts through
trials that break up the soil. He feeds us with the Bread of Life. He waters us
with His Precious Blood. He surrounds us with His Church, His Saints, His
Mother.
He is giving us time. But time is not infinite. The parable ends with
those haunting words: "if not, you can cut it down."
The Rosary: Our Lady's Intercession
And this, my friend, is where the Holy Rosary becomes not just devotional
practice but spiritual necessity. When we pray the Rosary, we are doing what
the gardener does, we are interceding. But more than that, we are allowing Our
Lady to intercede for us. Each Hail Mary is our voice joining with hers, the
voice that has never been refused by God, asking for grace upon grace upon
grace.
Consider the mysteries we contemplate:
The Joyful Mysteries remind us what fruit looks like. Mary's fiat, "Let it be done to me
according to your word", this is the fruitfulness God seeks. Not our
achievements, but our yes. Our openness to bearing Jesus Christ into the world.
The Luminous Mysteries are the Master coming to seek fruit. Jesus in the Jordan, Jesus at Cana,
Jesus proclaiming the Kingdom, Jesus Christ transfigured, Jesus feeding us with
Himself, all of this is God's patient cultivation of our souls.
The Sorrowful Mysteries show us the price of our redemption. That barren
fig tree deserved to be cut down. We deserve to be cut down. But Jesus allowed
Himself to be "cut down" instead scourged, crowned with thorns,
crucified. When we meditate on His Passion with His Mother, we understand what
it cost to buy us this extra time, this additional year of mercy.
The Glorious Mysteries show us both our hope and our warning. Jesus rises; the fruit of the
Resurrection is offered to us. But there is also judgment. There is a final
reckoning. The tree will eventually be judged by its fruit or its barrenness.
Living in the Year of Mercy
We do not know if we are in the first year, the second, or the last year
of God's patience with us. We do not know if tomorrow the Master will say,
"Enough. Cut it down."
What we do know is this: Today, right now, the gardener is still pleading
for us. Jesus is still interceding. Mary is still praying. The sacraments are
still available. The soil is still being worked.
The Rosary, prayed with reverence and attention, is our daily
participation in this divine mercy. It is Mary leading us by the hand to the
Confessional, to the altar, to genuine conversion of heart. Each decade is an
act of cooperation with the Gardener who refuses to give up on us.
But we must bear fruit. We must produce something for the Kingdom, works
of mercy, growth in virtue, souls brought to Christ, sins conquered, love given
freely. Faith without works is dead, and a tree without fruit will be cut down.
The Call to Repentance
"Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish."
These words should echo in our souls. Not to terrify us into despair, but
to wake us from our spiritual slumber. God is not cruel, He is just. And His
justice is tempered by a mercy so vast that He became man and died for us. But
mercy does not eliminate the need for our response.
Repentance is not a one-time event. It is the ongoing work of the soul
that recognizes its barrenness and cries out, "Lord, I am not bearing the
fruit You deserve. Dig around my roots. Feed me. Prune me. Do whatever You
must, but please, make me fruitful for Your Kingdom."
The Rosary prayed with this spirit becomes our daily repentance, our
daily turning back to God, our daily acceptance of His grace.
This Is Your Hour
You have been given time. You have been given the sacraments. You have
been given the Church, the Saints, the Mother of God herself. You have been
given the Rosary, this powerful weapon and gentle guide.
The question is not whether God will give you what you need to bear
fruit. He already has. The question is: What will you do with this year of
mercy?
The gardener is at work. Will you cooperate? Will you let him transform
you from a barren tree into one that produces fruit thirty, sixty, a
hundredfold?
Pray the Rosary. Go to Confession. Receive the Eucharist worthily. Study
the Faith. Serve the poor. Love the difficult. Forgive the unforgivable.
Bear fruit while there is still time.
For unless we repent, truly, deeply, daily, we shall all likewise perish.
But if we turn to Him, if we cooperate with His grace, if we allow Our
Lady to lead us through those mysteries to the Heart of her Son...
Then we will not be
cut down. We will bear fruit for eternal life.
I know this reflection is longer than usual, but when I looked over this week’s upcoming scripture, my heart wouldn't let me write
anything shorter. The urgency of the warning Jesus gives us, "unless you
repent", and the tender mercy of that gardener pleading for one more year
moved me so deeply that I had to find a way to connect it to the Rosary, to
show how Our Lady helps us cooperate with God's grace in this precious time
we've been given. I've been working on this for a couple of days, praying about
it, wanting it to make sense and touch your heart the way it touched mine as I
did my morning prayer and my evening Legion prayers. God bless you and thank
you for taking the time to read my blog each day.
©2025 James Dacey, Jr., OFS
