The Third Sunday in Lent

In today's first reading, God presents Himself to Moses, telling Moses His name: I AM.  God wanted to establish a relationship with Moses, just as He wants to establish a relationship with all of us.  He speaks to Moses, offering him comfort in the face of his doubts, just as He does when we doubt our abilities.  He also gives Moses a monumental task of freeing his people from slavery, so to does He give us tasks that test our abilities, but that are always within our reach.

In the Gospel, Jesus tells us that disasters are not signs of God's disapproval.  He even presents the parable of a fig tree that hasn't produced fruit for three years.  Rather than chop it down, the gardener begs to have another year to cultivate a fertilize the tree.  Sometimes, that is also what we need: time to enrich ourselves spiritually so that we too can bring fruitful deeds to our world.

In both cases, these stories about God's love for us, and His belief in us.  Today's homily pointed out that God doesn't give us boundaries as a way to point out how we fall short, but rather as a way to guide us to greatness.  When we fail, we so often feel that we are unworthy of God and sometimes go so far as to hate Him for the judgement we feel He has placed on us.  We forget that He loves us always, and that He does not point fingers when we fall, but rather stoops to pick us up and take our sufferings into Himself.