Beginning of Mass: 2022 ‘Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.’ These words were addressed by Jesus to his contemporaries and are addressed to us in today’s liturgy. We always begin our Mass with a call to repentance.

Homily:

“Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish as they did”. Jesus says these words twice. Its not a very popular phrase. Then he gives us the parable of the fig tree, giving us a second chane to repent. We have only a short life to take advantge of Christ’s mercy.  The words of Jesus are hard to challenge, it takes grace.  Even the word repent is difficult to swallow, it’s like someone is on a street corner saying that the end of the world is coming, repent.   Many of us do not want to change, and we have a marvellous resistance to change, escpecially interior conversion. We need to turn away from our sins, because they hurt us, and they hurt other people.  Unless you turn away from your sins, not the sins of other people, and we are very good at pointing out the sins of other people, I’ve got a list of sins of other people, there this there that, etc.  Look at yourselves, stop looking at others.  The conversion needs to be in our own hearts.  We have many examples of  conversion of people people who have got. Second chance. St. Augustine, he was a kind of a womaniser, and when he felt the Lord inviting him to repentence he said ‘not now Lord’.  He needed to be knocked off his intelectual horse when he was reading the life of St. Anthony of the desert.  Bernard Nathonson, who was a gynecologist, who performed abortions,  and he had a major conversion one day when he was looking at an ultra sound,  seeing the baby resisiting the tools coming in to abort that child;  it impressed him so greatly, that he realised in one moment, the horror he had done in so many abortions he performed.  It changed his life for ever, and he became an advocate for Pro life.  St. ignatius of Loyola, wo was on his way to fame and fortune, when a canonball shattered his leg,  while in hospital, he had no netflx, youtube,  he read the lives of the saints which were the only books around,  and that changed his mind and heart for ever and then he was all in.  He went on a pilgirmage to Montserrat (near Barcelona in Spain) and he wrote the spiritual exercses,  and he founded the society of Jesus.  His Jesuits at that time were  are insturmental in the counter reformation of the church. In the gospel today, we read abuot a landlord who comes to visit his vineyard, to see what it has produced during the year. He sees a fig tree, which has been standing there for three years and has never produced anything.  So he calls the gardener and asks him to cut it down.  The gardener loved the tree,  he asks the Landlord to give it another chance, I will do my best and maybe it will produce fruit next year, if not I will cut it down.  He saved the fig tree. In this story it is very easy to see that Jesus is the gardener,  and each one of us is the fig tree. Jesus loves us and wants to give us another chance to be the person we really are, and  to do our very best.  Jesus never gives up on the human person.  If we have received such kindness, we too should show this kindness, and we must be ready to give a second chance and even a third chance.  It may mean giving a new life to somebody like we have received from Jesus.