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What are we to make of Jesus’s seemingly stern warning that: ‘unless you repent, you will all perish as they did’? Jack Mahoney SJ examines the meaning of this caution that we will hear in Sunday’s gospel, which only Saint Luke records. Far from issuing a threat to his hearers, Jesus was speaking of the wealth of God’s love and patience, and encouraging us to respond in whatever way we can. |  download this article in PDF format |
The last two Sunday Gospels have described dramatic events in the life of Jesus which the Church has provided for our Lenten reflection – his temptation in the desert by the devil and his Transfiguration during a night of prayer to his Father on a mountain top – and forthcoming Sundays in Lent will contain further events from Jesus’s life for us to think and pray about. This Sunday, however, the gospel reading taken from Luke 13:1-9 recounts to us Jesus’s exhortation that we need to ‘repent or perish,’ with a parable to illustrate this. Perhaps the Church considers that as we are now well into Lent, beginning the third week, this is a good time to come straight to the point and have Jesus give us a strong hint that if we haven’t already done something about Lent by way of extra prayer and penance and good works, as I discussed in a previous article, then it’s about time we did!
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