This Year Also

Every few weeks the news hands us a tragedy that makes no sense: a parking garage that collapses onto the cars inside it, a family, at the start of their vacation, hit by a driver who never saw the light change. Our reaction to these stories is often to try and rationalize the event. We hunt for the detail in the stories that explains it: a malfunctioning stoplight that caused the wreck, or a missed inspection that failed to notice the problem in the garage. We try to find a reason why this disaster belongs to somebody else’s story, and we can tell ourselves there’s plenty of time. The same instinct runs our spiritual lives. Plenty of us have been Catholic for thirty years and are still nursing the same resentment and confessing the same sin. We assume next year will be the year we finally grow up. Somewhere under all of it sits an assumption we’d be embarrassed to say out loud: that because God has been patient with us, he must not be paying close attention.

Today’s Gospel opens with two headlines. Some people tell Jesus about Galileans whom Pilate killed while they were offering sacrifice, and Jesus adds eighteen people crushed when a tower fell at Siloam. He won’t let the crowd sort the dead into the guilty and the unlucky: “unless you repent you will all likewise perish.” Then he tells a parable about a fig tree that has borne nothing for three years, and a vinedresser who pleads for it: “Let it alone, sir, this year also.” Paul tells the Ephesians that Christ has given gifts to his Church so that we may “no longer be children” and may “grow up in every way into him.”

Today the Church may keep the optional memorial of Saint Anthony Mary Claret, a textile weaver from Barcelona who became an archbishop in Cuba and lived through fourteen attempts on his life. So here’s the question these readings put to you and me: what are we doing with the year God has given us?

The Readings

First Reading: Ephesians 4:7-16

But grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it is said,

“When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.”

(In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is he who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, for the equipment of the saints, for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ; so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love.

Gospel: Luke 13:1-9

There were some present at that very time who told him of the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered thus? I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen upon whom the tower in Silo′am fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.”

And he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Lo, these three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down; why should it use up the ground?’ And he answered him, ‘Let it alone, sir, this year also, till I dig about it and put on manure. And if it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”

Scriptural Analysis

Yesterday Paul begged the Ephesians to keep “the unity of the Spirit.” Today he turns to the variety inside that unity. “Grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.” Peter Williamson explains that the phrase makes Jesus the giver, who decides “the measure and kind of spiritual gifting each person receives,” and that the gifts exist for the benefit of the Church, the same point Paul makes in Romans (Romans 12:6). Then Paul edits Psalm 68, a hymn of God going up in victory, taking captives and receiving tribute (Psalm 68:18). In Paul’s version the conqueror hands out the gifts, just as Peter said at Pentecost: exalted at the Father’s right hand, Jesus “poured out” the Spirit (Acts 2:33). Margaret MacDonald adds that Jewish tradition read this psalm of Moses climbing Sinai and coming down with the Law, so Christ appears as the new Moses, ascending in order to give.¹

Then the puzzle of verses 9 and 10: if he ascended, he must first have “descended into the lower parts of the earth.” Williamson thinks Paul most likely means the Incarnation (Philippians 2:7; John 3:13) or the burial, though the descent to the dead remains possible. (1 Peter 3:18-22) MacDonald also leans toward the Incarnation. Either way, Paul marvels that the One who came so far down has gone so high, “that he might fill all things,” which Williamson reads as exercising divine authority everywhere (Jeremiah 23:24).²

Consider now the gifts themselves: “apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers.” Williamson notices that Paul names people here, whereas his other lists name abilities: God gives persons to the Church. The Greek suggests “pastors and teachers” are one group, resident shepherds who teach, the role “most similar to what our bishops and priests do.” Their job is “the equipment of the saints, for the work of ministry.” Williamson says that means preparing the members of the Church, “particularly the laity,” for all that ministry entails, and ministry, diakonia (dee-ah-koh-NEE-ah), runs from hospitality (Luke 10:40) to feeding the poor to preaching the word. MacDonald points to the noun for “equipment,” katartismos (kah-tar-tis-MOS). It appears only here in the New Testament, and in ancient medical writing it means “the setting of a bone.”³ Christ gives his Church pastors the way a doctor sets a broken arm, so the limb can carry weight again.

The goal is “mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” The adjective is teleios (TEL-ay-os), which Williamson glosses as “perfect, complete, or fully developed.” There are “degrees of unity in the faith, just as there are degrees of holiness,” he says, so growth is expected, and the focus is on the whole body: “What would a mature parish or diocese look like?”⁴

Paul describes the opposite in verse 14: children “tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine.” MacDonald explains that the verb, klydonizomai (kloo-doh-NEED-zoh-my), means literally to be tossed by waves, the same picture James uses for the doubter, “driven and tossed by the wind” (James 1:6). And the word behind “the cunning of men,” kybeia (koo-BAY-ah), literally means “dice playing.” False teachers roll loaded dice with your soul. Williamson’s verdict: “Stability in the truth is a mark of maturity.” Saint Thomas Aquinas is more direct: “It is a quality of the child never to be fixed or determinate in anything; he rather believes whatever is told him.” And so, “Whoever is to meet the Lord must leave his childhood behind.”⁵

The cure is “speaking the truth in love.” The Greek is a single participle, alētheuontes (ah-lay-THYOO-on-tes), and Williamson says it is built on the word for truth, something like “truthing,” set against the trickery before it. Aquinas reads the line as “doing the truth in charity,” since “it is not enough simply to hear or teach the truth, it must be acted on as well.” Then the body appears, “joined and knit together by every joint.” Williamson notes that “no part is dispensable,” and MacDonald points out that the word for “measure,” metron (MEH-tron), returns in verse 16, tying the end of the passage to its beginning: each part works according to its own measure of grace. Aquinas draws the conclusion that matters most for today’s Gospel: “not to make progress in the approach to God is itself a retrogression.” And the whole sentence ends on love.⁶

We turn now to the Gospel. Pablo Gadenz says the massacre is recorded nowhere else but fits what Philo and Josephus tell us about Pilate’s brutality, and that the reporters probably wanted Jesus’ opinion on the Roman occupation. Luke Timothy Johnson explains the assumption behind the story: in popular piety, rooted in Deuteronomy, disaster was read as punishment for sin, the same assumption the disciples bring to the man born blind (John 9:2). Jesus turns the news back on his listeners: “unless you repent you will all likewise perish.” Gadenz says Jesus widens the frame from this life to the next: fear God more than anyone who “can only ‘kill the body’” (Luke 12:4-5).⁷ Saint John Chrysostom, in the Catena Aurea (kah-TAY-nah OW-ray-ah) of Saint Thomas, explains why God’s justice doesn’t arrive on schedule: “he does not punish all in this life, giving them a time meet for repentance. Nor however does he reserve all for future punishment, lest men should deny His providence.”⁸

Then the second headline. Johnson notes that the “tower in Siloam” is a pyrgos (POOR-gos), the kind of tower built into a city wall, near the pool of Siloam (John 9:7). “Worse offenders” is literally “debtors,” opheiletai (oh-fay-LAY-tie). Johnson draws the lesson: “death itself, with the judgment of God, is always so close. It can happen when engaged in ritual. It can happen standing under a wall.” He passes on a rabbinic exchange. Rabbi Eliezer taught that a person should repent the day before death, and his disciples answered that a person could die any day, “therefore all of life should be one of repentance.”⁹

Then the parable. Gadenz explains that the fig tree stands in a vineyard, an old image for Israel (Isaiah 5:1-7, a passage that also mentions a tower). The owner may represent God, and since the vinedresser calls him kyrios (KOO-ree-os), “sir” or “Lord,” he may also represent Jesus. Johnson notices the owner’s diligence: “this man has been coming out regularly to check his tree.” Then the verdict is held off. “It is allowed to have time,” Johnson writes; “indeed, it has already had time to bear fruit.” Gadenz draws the moral for every reader: God patiently waits to see whether a person will repent and bear fruit (Romans 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9), and the parable echoes John the Baptist, “Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down” (Luke 3:9). The extra year offers hope, and time is running out.¹⁰

The Fathers read the fig tree as each of us. Theophylact, the eleventh-century Byzantine commentator, says, “each one of us also is a fig tree planted in the vineyard of God.” Saint Gregory the Great says that whoever bears no fruit “cumbereth the ground; for wherever he is himself placed, he there denies to another the opportunity of working.” Saint Augustine explains the vinedresser’s work. “To dig about it, is to teach humility and patience, for the ground which has been dug is lowly.” The manure is the sorrow of sinners, “for they who do penance and do it truly are in soiled garments.” And Saint Gregory Nazianzen begs us to treat one another the way the vinedresser treats the tree: “Let us not then strike suddenly, but overcome by gentleness, lest we cut down the fig tree still able to bear fruit.”¹¹

Put the two readings side by side, and they describe one kind of patience. Gregory the Great says every one “according to his measure,” and that’s Paul’s word. Christ gives grace to each of us according to the measure of his gift, and he wants the whole body to reach the measure of his own stature. The vinedresser asks for one more year and picks up a spade; Christ gives pastors to set our broken bones. In both readings God’s patience is a gardener’s patience: it digs, it feeds the roots, and it expects figs.

Daily Application

The interior movement these readings ask for is for us to stop treating God’s patience as permission to stay where we are. The extra year in the parable is a gift, but it is a gift with a purpose. Aquinas says that standing still in the life of grace is already sliding backward. Sadly, many of us can name the place where we stopped growing: a prayer life that hasn’t changed since Confirmation, a temper we’ve decided is just our personality, a sin we confess every month without asking God to dig around its roots.

The Church calls the way forward repentance, and the Catechism describes it in words that sound a lot like the vinedresser’s work. Interior repentance is “a radical reorientation of our whole life,” and it comes “with hope in God’s mercy and trust in the help of his grace.” Then it says, “God gives us the strength to begin anew.”¹² So begin. Pick the one thing you’ve been promising to change next year, take it to confession this week, and state it directly. Then let someone dig around it: a spiritual director, a priest, a friend who has earned the right to speak the truth to you in love. Allowing someone to dig around is humbling. It’s also how the roots get air.

Finally, remember that the fig tree stands in a vineyard. Paul’s maturity belongs to the whole body. Gregory warns that a barren tree takes up ground someone else could use. Christ has given you a gift, according to his measure, and that gift is not for you alone but also for the people around you. Ask where he has planted you and who is waiting on the fruit you are called to produce: a spouse, a parish ministry that has run on the same three volunteers for a decade, a child who needs to see an adult pray.

Saint Anthony Mary Claret spent his life tending vineyards. Franciscan Media tells how he learned Latin and printing in his spare time while working as a weaver and designer in the textile mills of Barcelona. As archbishop of Santiago in Cuba, he preached and heard confessions almost without ceasing, taught enslaved people the faith, and was slashed across the face and wrist by a hired assassin. He proposed family farms growing a variety of foods, against the powerful men who wanted everyone working a single cash crop of sugar, and he wrote a book called Reflections on Agriculture. He founded the Claretians and wrote or published 200 books and pamphlets. Franciscan Media’s reflection says he understood “that guiding people to God could be dangerous, but it is never a fool’s errand.”¹³ He was a weaver who knew how threads hold together, and an archbishop who knew that fruit takes tending.

You’ve been given this year also. Let the Gardener dig, grow up into Christ, and bear fruit.

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Notes

1. ↑ Peter S. Williamson, Ephesians, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009), 114-115; Margaret Y. MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, Sacra Pagina 17 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), 290.
2. ↑ Williamson, Ephesians, 115-116; MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, 290.
3. ↑ Williamson, Ephesians, 116-118; MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, 292.
4. ↑ Williamson, Ephesians, 120-121.
5. ↑ MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, 293-294; Williamson, Ephesians, 121; Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Letter of Saint Paul to the Ephesians, chap. 4, lect. 5, no. 219, at aquinas.cc.
6. ↑ Williamson, Ephesians, 122-123; MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, 294-295; Aquinas, Commentary on Ephesians, chap. 4, lect. 5, nos. 222-223.
7. ↑ Pablo T. Gadenz, The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018), 249; Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagina 3 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), 211.
8. ↑ Saint John Chrysostom, quoted in Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, Collected out of the Works of the Fathers, vol. 3, St. Luke (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1843), on Luke 13:1-5.
9. ↑ Johnson, Gospel of Luke, 211, 213; Gadenz, Gospel of Luke, 249-250.
10. ↑ Gadenz, Gospel of Luke, 250-251; Johnson, Gospel of Luke, 211, 214.
11. ↑ Theophylact, Saint Gregory the Great, Homily 31 on the Gospels, Saint Augustine and Saint Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 32, quoted in Aquinas, Catena Aurea, vol. 3, St. Luke, on Luke 13:6-9.
12. ↑ Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), nos. 1431-1432.
13. ↑ “Saint Anthony Mary Claret,” Saint of the Day, Franciscan Media, accessed October 19, 2026, franciscanmedia.org.

Books Cited

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• Peter S. Williamson, Ephesians, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Baker Academic, 2009)
• Pablo T. Gadenz, The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Baker Academic, 2018)
• Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagina 3 (Liturgical Press, 1991)
• Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels (Baronius Press)
• Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Doubleday / Image, 2003)