“if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!”
In the Gospel reading, Jesus tells two stories; in both stories people perish.
What were the two stories? What happened in each account? The first is the slaughter of the Galileans at the hands of Pilate. The historian Josephus reports this slaughter. “Josephus reports that Pilate had disrupted a religious gathering of the Samaritans on Mt. Gerizim with a slaughter of the participates.”[i] The second story is that of the Tower of Siloam. This was a tower in Jerusalem that had fallen (an accident) and caused the death of eighteen people.
The people want to know from Jesus why bad things happen to good or innocent people. The Galileans were doing what they believed to be as good, offering sacrifice, and yet Pilate slaughtered them while they sacrificed. The falling of the Tower of Siloam was an accident, much like a natural disaster, car wreck, etc. Out of all the people in Jerusalem, why did those eighteen perish? Jesus knows the questioners heart and mind and asks them if they thought the Galileans who suffered where greater sinners than other Galileans or if the eighteen were more guilty that others in Jerusalem. Did these occurrences take place because of the sin of the individuals?
God does not will evil (bad) nor does He want it, but because of human free will, God allows evil (bad) to happen if we choose it. Saint Paul says to the Romans, “…all have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God.”[ii] The consequence of sin is the deprivation of God who is all good and the source of all goodness. Evil exists not because of God, but because of man, who deprives himself and others of God.
The first story is about a man, Pilate, who used his free will to do evil. Pilate freely chose to deprive himself and others of the good, in this case the good of life. The second story is an accident, it may have been a human flaw in the engineering or it was simply the tower’s time to fall. Whether the case is intentional or incidental, the sin of the people who perish, is not the cause of their death. Pilate is the cause in one; an accident is the cause of the other.
Is a natural disaster or accident the wrath of God? Original sin caused disorder not only in man’s relationship with God, but also in the natural order. The prophet Isaiah describes the natural disorder that will be ordered by Jesus Christ the Prince of Peace at the end of time. “Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the young lion shall browse together with a little child to guide them. The cow and the bear shall be neighbors, together their young shall rest; the lion shall eat hay like the ox. The baby shall play by the cobra’s den, and the child lay his hand on the adder’s lair. There shall be no harm or ruin on all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be filled with knowledge of the Lord, as water cover the sea.”[iii] Jesus proves that He is the Prince of Peace when He throughout His earthly life shows control over nature. He brings order to natural disorder as in the calming of the sea. The following are a list of Jesus’s miracles showing His control over nature.
How does Jesus show control over nature?
Nature Miracles
John 2 – Changing of the water into wine at Cana
Luke 5 – First miraculous draught of fishes
Matthew 8; Mark 4; Luke 8 – Calming of the tempest (Storm)
Matthew 14; Mark 6; John 6 – First multiplication of loaves
Matthew 14; Mark 6; John 6 – Jesus walking on the water
Matthew 15; Mark 8 – Second multiplication of loaves
Matthew 17 – Stater in the fish’s mouth
Matthew 21; Mark 11 – Cursing of the fig tree
John 21 – Second miraculous draught of fishes
Natural disasters and accidents also teach us how frail the things of the world and even the world itself is. We may love living in a certain area, but fear the natural disasters that occur there. This teaches us that our true home is not in this world, which does not last, but in heaven which is eternal. This also teaches us that nothing is perfect, but God alone. Many magnificent cities, which have taken man centuries to build up, can be gone in a matter of hours through a natural disaster. Great structures created by the hand of man have their limits and eventually crumble and fall. This reality reminds us of our frail humanity and humbles us in the presence of an all loving and all mighty God.
VIDEO – One man’s house saw the beginning and end of the Civil War
The American Civil War started in Manassas, Virginia or Bull Run and ended near Appomattox Court House, Virginia. A man by the name of Wilmer McLean lived in Manassas at the first major battle of the war. To keep his family safe from the war he moved them south and west in Virginia. Almost four years later Grant and Lee would sit in his parlor negotiating the peace to the end of the war. We see by this quirky story in history that sometimes even when we try and run away from problems we still have no control over things. It shows us how indeed we truly rely on God’s providence.
Why does God allow evil? First, He respects our free will. Second, although He allows evil, which is the deprivation of good, He is always working and offering the grace necessary to restore the good that humans deprive themselves and others of. God allows the evil of the crucifixion. Humanity not only rejected Jesus Christ, true God and true man, but also crucified Him. God allows this because of free will, but He brings the ultimate good, salvation out of the ultimate suffering.
“As St. Paul affirms, ‘Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.’ But to do its work grace must uncover sin so as to convert our hearts and bestow on us ‘righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ Like a physician who probes the wound before treating it, God, by his Word and by his Spirit, casts a living light on sin: Conversion requires convincing of sin; it includes the interior judgment of conscience, and this, being a proof of the action of the Spirit of truth in man’s inmost being, becomes at the same time the start of a new grant of grace and love: ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’ Thus in the ‘convincing concerning sin’ we discover a double gift: the gift of truth of conscience and the gift of the certainty of redemption. The Spirit of truth is the Consoler.”[iv]
Jesus quickly brings the attention away from perishing physically to perishing spiritually. He takes the concern off of the people who did perish and places it upon to those who might perish if they do not care for their soul. Repentance is the key. Saint John the Baptist said, “Produce good fruits as evidence of your repentance.”[v]
In the parable of the fig tree, if the tree does not produce fruit, it will perish. If we do not produce fruit we will perish and we cannot produce fruit, unless we repent.
[i] Jospehus; Antiquities – footnotes from the NAB
[ii] Romans 3:23
[iii] Isaiah 11:6-9
[iv] Catechism of the Catholic Church – Section 1848
[v] Luke 3:8