Holy Tuesday B

Back to the fig tree. It wasn’t the season for fruit to grow on this tree, and yet Jesus had cursed it for being fruitless. There’s something odd about this. There’s something here that’s making us buckle. This fig tree, which couldn’t be expected to bear fruit out of season, is cursed by Jesus for not doing so. What gives? Jesus makes of the fig tree a parable.

What is a parable? We are told in the Gospel that: “Jesus would not speak to them (the people of his day) except in parables” (Mark 4:34).

So the question is why? Why did the Lord speak and teach in parables? For this we first look at an official definition:

“At its simplest a parable is a metaphor or simile drawn from nature or common life, arresting the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, and leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application to tease it into active thought." ― C.H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom

In other words, a literary technique, used by rabbis those days to help their students delve deeper into a truth that is being taught. So, for example you have the “Good Shepherd” who leaves ninety-nine sheep in search of the one that has strayed. How is this a good thing, that ninety-nine are now left unguarded? What’s Jesus trying to say about the one lost sheep? See, we have to delve deeper. 

With parables Jesus was yearning and hoping his beloved children would, stop, think, reconsider, analyze, and then apply to their spiritual life so as to strengthen their faith. In fact, when we look at the Person and mission of Jesus, we can see that he himself is the most excellent and powerful parable through which the Godhead speaks to us.

Pope Benedict XVI expressed this eloquently in his Angelus reflection on July 10, 2011, when he said: “Ultimately, the true "Parable" of God is Jesus himself, his Person who, through the sign of humanity at the same time conceals and reveals the divinity. In this way God does not force us to believe in him, but he draws us to himself with the truth and goodness of his incarnate Son: love, in fact, always respects freedom.”

Okay, back to the fig tree. Let’s read it in Mark 11:13-15.  “On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry.  And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs.  And he said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it.” What would Jesus be trying to tell us? Why would he be that enraged that he would curse the fig tree to withering?  So many questions come to mind. What’s he really trying to say and show? Why would he curse the innocent tree? It has to do with its foliage.

In a verse-by-verse Catholic commentary we read that, “A mature fig tree has 2 crops. The first crop of figs forms together with the leaves. The second crop forms before the leaves drop, so there should always be figs as long as there are leaves.” When the verse says "it was not the season for figs" a horticulturist would understand that it was also not the time for leaves. Yet by showing leaves, it was advertising that it was bearing and concealing fruit, but since it did not have the fruit it advertised, Jesus cursed it. Okay, now we get a better picture of what is at least happening exteriorly here. Yet, what would be the main lesson Jesus wanted his apostles, and by their extension all of us, to remember? We should take away a warning that if we profess our faith but do not live it we will be similarly cursed. And hence Jesus’ warnings: not everyone who says to me “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven. For this reason he condemned the “fruitlessness” of the Pharisees who exteriorly advertised they were holy and virtuous: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean” Matthew 23:27. The Lord is strongly encouraging us to build a real and authentic relationship with him, by listening to his words, and living them, and avoiding at all costs making others believe we are, when in actuality we are not! We do this for example when we expect from others the virtues and righteousness we ourselves are not actively working on. “And they tie up heavy burdens and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as their finger” Matthew 23:24

Moving along, we will need to skim through some of the events, highlighting some interactions our Lord engages in on this day. They get back to Jerusalem and he’s teaching again in the temple. He teaches extensively using more parables. Later on that day (and again we’re still concentrating on Tuesday of Holy Week), Jesus will again allude to the fig tree when talking about the end times.

He is then confronted by the Temple leadership for what he did yesterday in cleansing the temple and overturning the tables of the money changers. They question his authority for doing so. He drops on them the parable of the vineyard (cf Mt 21:33-46), where first the tenants seize the servants and put them to death and then also the landowner’s son. So, as he is about to depart this world, he is lamenting the fact that he has been rejected by the people he chose, treasured and led in the Old Testament, but whom he now says will be conduits to ushering his universal salvation to all nations.

The same theme is also highlighted in the parable of the wedding banquet, (cf Mt. 22:1). Who would refuse a wedding banquet put on by a king? And who is the Son getting married to? Jesus is the bridegroom. Jesus is basically highlighting what and who it is he’ll be dying for!

They try to trap him regarding paying taxes (cf Mt 22:15) but he reminds them that we must fulfil all legitimate righteousness, never forgetting that our primary allegiance is always given to God.

He then goes on to rebuke the Sadducees who deny the resurrection (cf Mt. 22:23).

Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”

In the afternoon, as they begin their walk back to Bethany with a stop-over on the Mt of Olives, the disciples marvel at the Temple and Jesus foretells its destruction given that he will be ushering in the new covenant in his body and blood, and within which he instituted his Church, the new People of God, who will offer the perfect sacrifice around the world, from the east to the west, a perfect offering to the Eternal Father—himself! The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Jesus delivers what is known as the Olivet Discourse. Again, here we see echoes of Ezekiel’s vision, because Ezekiel sees the Lord leaving the temple from the Eastern gate riding on a chariot driven by angels, where the chariot rests over the Mount of Olives.

“As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. ‘Tell us,’ they said, ‘when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?'” (Matthew 24:3)

Jesus foretold two judgments, not one. Thus, Sections 585-586 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church read in part:

“On the threshold of his Passion Jesus announced the coming destruction of this splendid building, of which there would not remain ‘one stone upon another’. By doing so, he announced a sign of the last days, which were to begin with his own Passover. Therefore his being put to bodily death presaged the destruction of the Temple, which would manifest the dawning of a new age in the history of salvation: ‘The hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father'” (art. 585-586).

According to the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, “Jesus’ words [about judgment upon Jerusalem] were fulfilled in A.D. 70 when Roman legions destroyed Jerusalem and brought the Old Covenant to a dramatic and violent end. More than one million Jews perished in the catastrophe” (see notes on Mark’s Gospel, Chapter 13). Thus, Jesus’ first judgment prophecy in his Olivet Discourse was fulfilled with remarkable accuracy. The second judgment prophecy has not been fulfilled, and will not be fulfilled until the end of the world.

The question we must ask, is: are we ready? What is the state of our souls? How will we appear before the judgement seat of Christ whether it’s at the last or particular judgement? How did Jesus say he would judge us?