“For three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fig tree but have found none. So cut it down. Why should it exhaust the soil?”

          We’re now in the very heart of Lent. For two and a half weeks we have striven to be faithful to our Lenten commitments, to live penitentially, to examine our consciences more deeply, to repent more fully of our sins. Next Sunday we have the slight break of Laetare Sunday before we start into the most intense part of all: Passiontide, the two weeks that culminate in the Sacred Paschal Triduum.

          But for now, we’re still in the thick of it, in the very heart of Lent. We know that these forty days have something to do with the forty years that the Israelites spent wandering in the desert. But this is really a very odd comparison. St. Paul reminds the Corinthians today that, “God was not pleased with most of [the Israelites who came out of Egypt], for they were struck down in the desert.”

          It doesn’t take forty years to go from Egypt to Israel on foot. It wouldn’t take forty years to walk from the top of Alaska to the very bottom of South America. So why do the Israelites take forty years to walk what would nowadays be a nine-hour drive, like going from here to Philadelphia? They encounter hostility along the way. It’s not a vacant land that they are wandering through. Different tribes must be defeated, cities must be conquered. But the real reason is deeper. An entire generation had to die.

          At first, things go pretty well for the Israelites. In not much time, they make it to the border of the Promised Land. They send spies to scout it out, but the reports are not favorable. The battles to take control of their new home will be long-fought and hard-won, if they are won at all. “Then all the congregation raised a loud cry; … And all the people of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron; … ‘Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! … Why does the Lord bring us into this land, to fall by the sword? … Let us choose a captain, and go back to Egypt.’” Moses and Aaron attempt to dissuade them from their wrath. They are threatened with stoning.

          The Lord’s response is merciful, but severe. After they repent of murmuring against the Lord, He promises not to strike them down. But He tells them, “what you have said in my hearing I will do to you: your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness; and of all your number, numbered from twenty years old and upward, who have murmured against me, not one shall come into the land where I swore that I would make you dwell.”

          The Israelites wandered for forty years because an entire generation had to die – a generation who only knew how to be slaves – who, having been set free from Pharoah, wanted to go back to Egypt to be enslaved again. So to say that we spend forty days of penance as the Israelites spent forty years in the desert is really quite the statement. It means that something in you must die as well – the part of you that only knows how to be a slave.

           Christ tells us today about a tree that is not bearing fruit. It is a fig tree. I’m not sure exactly how the ancients regarded the fig tree, but in my opinion, figs are the most delicious fruit in the entire world. A real, tree-ripened fresh fig is unlike anything else. The dried figs you can buy in northern Indiana are but the smallest shadow of fig-ness in comparison. So, the man comes looking for the best fruit of all, from the tree that can produce the best, the sweetest, the freshest taste imaginable.

          That makes the let-down all the worse when he comes and finds no fruit, and it explains why he is so mad at this tree producing no fruit for the third year in a row. It was capable of so much more – it was capable of the best. And it gives nothing.

          The weapons of Lent are a remedy against fruitlessness in our own lives. And their use is even more important and urgent because the Christian – re-created in God’s image and likeness through Baptism – is the best of the trees, the fig tree, capable of producing the best fruit. We have seen how neglect of prayer and fasting leads to this fruitlessness. Today we can see how almsgiving is a means of cultivating the tree of your soul so that it can bear great fruit.

          We neglect almsgiving not only by neglecting to give alms, but also by neglecting to understand and integrate the real meaning of generosity. Just as the generation that grumbled against the Lord had to die before the people could enter the Promised Land, almsgiving is a recognition that something in me has to die.

          What is it in me that has to die? Of course, we know that money and possessions can be idols. That we are tempted to organize our lives around accumulating more money and more stuff. That we will even exploit the vulnerable and the weak to make a greater profit.

          What is it, though, that we are really after in the pursuit of wealth? There’s something deeper, and even more problematic than material possessions that we are seeking: security. If you feel totally secure in your financial position, it could be a sign that you are called to greater generosity, especially if the source of that security is a number in your bank account or investment portfolio, and not the security that consists in trusting the Lord.

          I mentioned last Sunday that I don’t give because of what it does for the Church or any other charity. I give for what it does for me. For the great majority of us, ten percent of our income will not radically change the finances of this parish or any other charity. But ten percent does change me. It changes my priorities. It changes the way I spend my time off. Because I don’t have as much money to spend on travel, it means I spend more time with my family. Because I don’t have as much money to eat out, I cook more dinners for brother priests in my home. Understood rightly, I can say confidently that I tithe for what it does for me. Not because it makes me feel good, but because it makes me a better Christian. It reorients, and cultivates, my heart.

          At the same time, the Church recalls the importance of generosity for the poor for their sake as well. She cites the admonition of St. John Chrysostom: “Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and deprive them of life. The goods we possess are not ours, but theirs.” When we attend to the needs of those in want, we give them what is theirs, not ours (CCC 2446).

          This obligation is not only for our immediate neighbors. We have a responsibility that extends far beyond our local community. The Catechism instructs us: “Rich nations have a grave moral responsibility toward those which are unable to ensure the means of their development by themselves or have been prevented from doing so by tragic historical events. It is a duty in solidarity and charity; it is also an obligation in justice if the prosperity of the rich nations has come from resources that have not been paid for fairly.”

          An ancient prayer from the divine office of the First Sunday of Lent exhorts us: “Hide your alms in the bosom of the poor, and he will pray for you to the Lord. Because as water extinguishes fire, alms extinguish sin.”

          “As water extinguishes fire, alms extinguish sin.” Just as the generation that grumbled against the Lord had to die for the people to enter the Promised Land, something in us has to die. Alms extinguish sin because they put to death a part of us that seeks delight and security in material possessions rather than the Lord.

          Almsgiving also puts to death our pride when it moves us to trust others with our money. Of course, we should do our due diligence about whether a charitable organization will make good use of our generosity. But we can never avoid a certain amount of trust, of letting go, that will be necessary. People who are deeply committed to helping the poor are going to make you uncomfortable – and that’s the way it should be. Real almsgiving moves us to let go of the pride that makes me only trust people with the same politics I have.

          The Servant of God Dorothy Day was one of the greatest advocates of the poor in 20^th Century America, especially for the way she formed communities to live in solidarity with the poor. She was a political anarchist. She wasn’t a communist, but she also roundly rejected capitalism. She never voted – the joke at Catholic worker houses was that if voting made any difference, “they” would have outlawed it by now. (For the record, Day never actually said this.) Dorothy Day makes me very uncomfortable. Maybe that’s why her cause for canonization seems to be going nowhere. Mother Theresa of Calcutta is a canonized saint, but she also was not afraid to make people uncomfortable. If the people you entrust with your generosity do not make you uncomfortable, they’re probably not really doing their job.

          To enter the Promised Land, an entire generation of the Chosen People had to die, a generation who only knew how to be slaves. The question for you this Lent is: Do you only know how to be a slave? Do you only know how to be a slave to your pleasure, your free time, and your possessions? Or are you ready to take the harder way, the narrow way, that seeks freedom from slavery to your own will, your pleasure, and your security through the Lenten weapons of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving? Just as the weapons of the soldiers were really the arma Christi, the weapons of Christ, through which He defeated your slavery to sin, so the weapons of Lent will set you free, so that you might not die in the desert, only having known how to be a slave, but rather might enter the true Promised Land of His eternal life.

The Rev. Royce V. Gregerson

Parish Church of Our Lady of Good Hope, Fort Wayne

III Sunday of Lent, A.D. MMXXV