If you do not repent, … Fr. Augustine

20111022 Saturday of the Twenty-Ninth Week in Ordinary Time (Lk 13:1-9)

My dear brothers and sisters, now, there is a change of seasons. When the seasons change, the temperature fluctuates from night to day. It is easy to catch a cold during this time. You should pay more attention to your health. And we are celebrating this mass for Blessed Virgin Mary on Saturday. We specially pray and sing that Mary is the foundation of salvation. We remember that Mary is the whole hope of our salvation and the foundation of all our confidence is found in the Blessed Virgin Mary.

If you do not repent, …

We just heard a fearful parable in today’s Gospel: “For three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fig tree but have found none. So cut it down. Why should it exhaust the soil?”

 This parable is not just about a fig tree, it is a clear fact about us. It tells us about repentance, namely ‘metanoia.’ From the Greek, metanoia means a changing of mind and refers to spiritual conversion. The word ‘metanoia’ appears often in the Gospel. It is usually translated into English as ‘repentance.’ Metanoia is necessary and valuable because it brings about change of mind or repentance. The concept of metanoia is concerned with our monastic life, especially with our monastic vow, Conversatio Morum which can be translated as “fidelity to monastic life” and be called “the monastic metanoia” at times. Therefore one of the three Benedictine vows is Conversatio Morum, a vow to be always striving for change in our life, always seeking God, always striving for perfection. I think that we are undergoing metanoia. We are turning our attention and our hearts around. We are looking for something better, something eternal.

 If so, we cannot afford to ignore this Gospel. We could bear the fruit of our repentance, it is a Conversatio Morum, “fidelity to monastic life”, that is to say the monastic metanoia.