In Need of Mercy – 3rd Sunday of Lent, Year C (2025)
3rd Sunday of Lent, Year C – Reflection
Exodus 3:1-8a,13-15
Psalm 103:1-2, 3-4, 607, 8, 11 (8a)
1 Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12
Luke 13:1-9
March 23, 2025
Last week we heard the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration. In my homily, I spoke of ways in which we can encounter our Lord.
Our readings today begin with the story of another famous encounter between God and a person, in this case Moses. It was on Mount Horeb where God “appeared to Moses in fire flaming out of a bush.”
Moses did not know it was the Lord he saw. Yet, he knew he was seeing something remarkable because while the bush was on fire, it was not being consumed by the fire.
As Moses approached the bush, “God called out to him from the bush, “Moses! Moses!”…Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.” God identifies himself as “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.” Thus, Moses came to realize that he was experiencing an encounter with God.
How would you react to such an encounter with God? Moses responded by hiding his face because “he was afraid to look at God.”
We want to be with God in Heaven but are we ready to encounter him now? Are we afraid to actually see God now? What reason do we have to fear God for He is a God of mercy? Yet, we know we are sinners. We don’t want God to see our sins.
If we repent, God will forgive us. You can be certain of this. He pardons all our iniquities and redeems us from our destruction. Receiving his forgiveness is an encounter with him. Forgiveness is part of his mercy but his mercy is more than just forgiveness.
We see his mercy in why God has appeared to Moses. “But the LORD said, “I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry of complaint against their slave drivers, so I know well what they are suffering. Therefore I have come down to rescue them from the hands of the Egyptians and lead them out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”
The Lord our God came to Moses and the Israelites to secure justice and the rights of all the oppressed.
Suffering was seen by the Israelites as punishment for sin. So, when Pilate “mingled the blood of the Galileans” with their sacrifices, the Israelites assumed the Galileans were being punished for some sin they had committed. Likewise, when the tower at Siloam fell on eighteen people, the Israelites assumed the eighteen people had sinned. Jesus tells them that it is not so yet He calls the people listening to him to repent or they will perish.
Have you sinned? Are you in need of repentance? I assume you would like God’s forgiveness but are you truly willing to repent?
Paul writes to the Corinthians of how Moses led the Israelites through the Red Sea as God parted the waters. Paul refers to this as their baptism into Moses.
This does not mean they had no sin. In fact, Paul writes, “Yet God was not pleased with most of them.” They sinned in the desert. So, they had to wait in the desert for forty years before entering the land of “milk and honey.”
God inspired people to write down the stories of the Israelites “as example for us, so that we might not desire evil things” as a “warning to us.”
Do you get the message? Again, I imagine that you want to be forgiven of your sins but do you even recognize your sins? Are you ready to repent while there is still time?
Jesus tells a parable of the person who found a fig tree in his orchard that bore no fruit for three years. So, he ordered it to be cut down so that it would not “exhaust the soil.”
What good fruit have you borne? Should God give up on you and order your destruction?
Do not be afraid for Jesus intercedes for us that God our Father will give us another year to bear fruit. Jesus “cultivates the ground” in offering his Word to us. He fertilizes us with his Body and Blood as food for our souls so we “may bear fruit in the future.” This is the mercy of Jesus, his Divine Mercy that flows from his Sacred Heart. The Holy Spirit guides and bestows gifts upon us so that we may do what is right and just.
In what way do you need God’s mercy so that you may bear good fruit?
Peace,
Fr. Jeff