The warnings are blunt and plentiful on the third Sunday in Lent. Repent, change your ways and bear fruit, or you will perish. The warnings are accompanied by God’s invitation to attentiveness: “Seek the Lord; call upon him…listen, so that you may live.” In the story of the fig tree, the landowner is patient and waits an additional year for the tree to bear fruit. The good news is that God knows our temptations and weakness and gives us strength to change.
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