Readings: Song of Songs 2:10-13 and Mark 11:12-24.

On the day of the Lord, ‘there will be neither sunlight nor cold, frosty darkness. It will be a unique day – with no distinction between day and night. When the evening comes, there will be light. (Zechariah 14:6-7). 

God is light, and Jesus came as the light. In the beginning God spoke ‘Let there be light’ and there was light – His speaking an act of creation, light created in His image. Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, writes St Paul, (Romans 1:20), so that people are without excuse.

God’s light mysteriously sustained the plants created on day three in the Genesis account of creation before He created the sun. The leaves like the watchmen of the morning follow the light throughout the day – so that those who seek Him may ask ‘Have you seen the one my heart loves?’ (Song of Songs 3:3).

The winter has passed, and the time of singing has come, Jesus was in the world, the true light, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognise Him. His own did not receive Him.

The curse of the fig tree brings us face to face with the divinity of Christ, to the identity of Jesus as the Word made flesh, who was with God in the beginning, God the Creator who has come Himself so that we may have life and live that life to the full.

The conditions were perfect, when the season of singing has come, the fig tree forms its early fruit – yet Jesus who entered fully into the human condition was hungry and there was nothing on the tree for Him to eat. 

‘Cursed is the ground’ and the fig tree is withered from its root. ‘May no one ever eat fruit from you again’. The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit, (Proverbs 18:21). Our words bring life, or they bring death, therefore we have a choice to make with the words we speak – do we speak to build up or tear down? To plant or uproot?

If we accept personal action as a meeting point between what is internal in us and the external world, then speech is clearly an action, a place of being known, or misunderstood.

If as Christians we recognise that our sins are committed in ‘thought, word and deed’ (as indeed we say in the Mass), and consider that everything we think, say or do is visible to God as it is not fully visible to ourselves or each other (1 Samuel 16:7), then imagine that everything about us and who we become – our nature, nurture, our choices, in their entirety are written on our soul – that life is a process of ‘soul formation’ so that arriving at the gate of heaven all is clearly seen and known. This means all our thoughts, speaking, and other bodily actions that we perceive as done outwardly to others are actually done to ourselves. (James 3:5). Our brother’s eye is our eye, their foot is our foot.

Yet even this plant, the fig tree a symbol of love itself and one of the first plants to be cultivated, did not recognise the time of harvest had come, even the fig tree was not ready on the day of the Lord to serve Him through whom it came into being and was now called to do that for which it was.

How interesting to position this with the driving out of the money changers – those who forgot the Lord and sort opportunities for profit in material gain and personal pleasure.

A house of prayer is a place of relationship, a place where the fruits of the spirit develop, where the treasures of heaven are harvested for the love of the other. For prayer is a way we love others as ourselves, a gift of our time and attention interceding for them and talking to God. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. He came as a gardener so that we might enter into His rest from the painful toil – to remove the thorns and thistles – to make a way where there seemed no way – to free us from this captivity – so that in love for Him and each other we become co-creators who shape an emerging future at edges of time. Pleasure is fleeting, but the fruits of the Spirit are eternal fruits; love, joy, patience, kindness – against these and more St Paul writes – there is no law, there is no condemnation for those who have these fruits ripening in their hearts.

Each of us is like a drop that falls from the sky into an ocean of mystery that is time and space. But it is in this time and in the space which we are that our presence suffuses God’s presence and light into that which is beyond our bounds. Each of us shapes the landscape of the souls given to us, personal, individual, and communal.

The harmony cultivated within us becomes the harmony that surrounds us and is given out from us to the world. The goal is continuity, of soulful action and being, that we do not separate the physical from the metaphysical. That we seek wholeness and do not break ourselves or others down into parts. Parts that we accept or reject. Jesus in being fully human and fully God, occupies all human finitude as well as the infinite. Jesus has closed the gap between Creator and created – He is our bridge, our place of meeting between heaven and earth. He is our life and our sweetness.

We must ask ourselves what barriers exist within us that prevent us from seeking Him who is Love to come and dwell within our own hearts, that we might also become a house of prayer and a home for others. Is love like a seal over our hearts? Do we consider ourselves Holy to the Lord – set apart?
Therefore, let us finish with the words of George Herbert’s poem ‘Love III’ to pause and think upon our own readiness to welcome and recognise Jesus.

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked any thing.

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.

Amen.