October 27, 2018 Saturday 29th Week in Ordinary Time 1st Reading: Eph 4:7–16 Gospel: Luke 13:1-9
Some persons told Jesus what had occurred in the Temple: Pilate had Galileans killed and their blood mingled with the blood of their sacrifices. Jesus replied, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this? I tell you: no. But unless you change your ways, you will all perish as they did.“And those eighteen persons in Siloah who were crushed when the tower fell, do you think they were more guilty than all the others in Jerusalem? I tell you: no. But unless you change your ways, you will all perish as they did.”And Jesus continued with this story, “A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard and he came looking for fruit on it, but found none. Then he said to the gardener: ‘Look here, for three years now I have been looking for figs on this tree and I have found none. Cut it down, why should it use up the ground?’ The gardener replied: ‘Leave it one more year, so that I may dig around it and add some fertilizer; and perhaps it will bear fruit from now on. But if it doesn’t, you can cut it down.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the
Assimilated Life
Experience)
A question about suffering cropped up when someone told Jesus about the Galileans ordered killed by Pilate so that their blood could be mingled with the blood of their sacrifices at the Temple. Jesus himself brought up the case of 18 persons in Siloah who died accidentally because of the collapse of a tower in order the complete the picture. The former died because of Pilate, an evil person, who perpetuated the crime, while the latter died because of accident. Basically these are the two main categories of sufferings. A third could be added: those caused by one’s own wrongdoings.
Jesus could have taken advantage of the occasion to unravel the mystery of suffering. He did not. Instead he urged his listeners to draw special lessons from sufferings in order to grow spiritually. This makes sense. Piercing the veil of human sufferings is like flogging a dead horse.
Let us not get lost in attempting to unveil the mystery of sufferings because our minds are just too limited. In our failure to understand, we might just sweepingly associate all misfortunes with punishment for sin. When we do we can become either self-righteous if spared from misfortunes, or bitter against God if we happen to be the victims.
Let us instead learn from the precious lessons that sufferings bring to our lives while we do our best to find solutions to our problems. – (Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., D.M.
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