text: Gospel: Our reading tells us what we must do. Repent! Turn away from sin and live a life pleasing and in union with God! Jesus uses the remembered events. He says suffering at the hands of others is not a punishment by God; suffering at a result of a natural calamity is not a punishment by God.
  But seeing these things, we are called to repent of our sins, so that, whether we suffer at the hands of others or from some natural or accidental cause, we will not be separated from God.
  The third illustration of the barren fig tree shows us what will happen as a result of our own unrepentant misdeeds. If we do not repent, turn to the Lord and bear the fruit of union with him, a day will come when we will be cut down like the tree and thrown into the everlasting fire. The scriptures are clear. God does not want the death of the sinner, but that he repents, reforms and turns back to God.
  We have been called by God. We have experienced the compassion and mercy of God in abundant ways. We do not know the day or the hour of God’s visitation. All of this is not said to put fear into our hearts but to help us to respond to the grace God offers us.
  The question is: are we bearing the fruit of God’s mercy and love? What does that look like? It is a life in union with God; a life of love and mercy; a life of obedience and surrender to the will of God; a life that will allow us to take off our shoes of sin; a life of looking at the face of God and sharing in his glory.
  Listen to the words of Pope Benedict XVI: “Ignorance diminishes guilt, and it leaves open the path to conversion. But it does not simply excuse, because at the same time it reveals a deadening of the heart that resists the call of Truth. All the more, then, it remains a source of comfort for all times and for all people that both in the case of those who genuinely did not know (his executioners) and in the case of those who did know (the people who condemned him), the Lord makes their ignorance the motive for his plea for forgiveness: he sees it as a door that can open us to conversion.”
  Jesus was putting into practice in his own life what he had taught others to do. He had taught the disciples to pray to the Father: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” “If you do not forgive from your heart, you will not be forgiven.” Peter asked him how far does a person have to go to forgive another. To Peter’s own response of seven, Jesus clearly said that it needs to be seventy times seventy times. Basically, there is no limit to forgiveness because God’s forgiveness of us is unlimited.
  Jesus forgave the sins of the paralyzed man, the sins of woman caught in adultery, the woman who washed his feet with her tears in response to his mercy. He expressed the Father’s forgiveness in the parable of the prodigal son. He showed what non forgiveness will do in the parable of the merciless servant. (To be continued)