Cedric Pisegna - Purpose Driven (01/23/2026)
Hi, I’m Father Cedric Pisegna, welcome to the program. It’s the third Sunday of Lent. I wanna proclaim to the gospel from Luke. «Some people told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices. Jesus said to them or replied, Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way, they were greater sinners than the other Galileans? By no means. But I tell you this, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did. Or the 18 people who were killed when the Tower of Siloam fell on them. Do you think that they were more guilty than everyone else in Jerusalem? By no means. But I tell you if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did. And then he told them this parable. There was once a person who had a fig tree planted in his orchard. And when he came in search of fruit on it but found none, he said to the gardener, 'For three years now I’ve come in search of fruit on this fig tree, but have found none. So cut it down. Why should it exhaust the soil? ' And then he said in reply, 'Sir, leave it for this year also and I shall cultivate the ground and fertilize it. It may bear fruit in the future. If not, then you can cut it down.'»
The gospel of the Lord. I think we’re used to Jesus preaching in ways that are very easy to listen to and, in ways, he kind of pats us on the back, tells us about how much God loves us and blessed are you who mourn, you will be comforted. He gives a lot of teaching full of wisdom and full of grace, very consoling teaching, but every once in a while, we get the tough love. We get the he doesn’t mince any words, he tells it like it is, and this is one of these instances. He tells us a parable, but he also talks about some tragic incidents that had occurred. «He said, 'the Galileans whose blood Pilate mixed with their sacrifices, were they any more guilty than anybody else in Jerusalem? ' And he said, 'no, but if you don’t repent, you’re going to end up the same way.'»
Wow, those are scorching words. And then he talked about the 18 people that had died, the Tower of Siloam had fallen, fell upon 18 people, and he said were they any more guilty than anybody else in Jerusalem? He said no, but unless you repent, you’re going to end up the same way, and I started thinking about the pandemic. We’ve all seen the images of these poor people in the hospital hooked to ventilators and dying and having IVs out of their arms, and what is Jesus saying? Are they more guilty than anybody else? No, but unless you repent, you’re going to end up the same way. These are scorching words. We’re not used to Jesus being so forthright. Unfortunately, a lot of preachers nowadays, I think they try to give their congregations what the congregations want to hear instead of what they need to hear.
I found out in the preaching business that people respond well when you pat 'em on the back and you tell them how good they are and how blessed they are, and they become your following, and, yeah, it can get that way. We can fall into that trap. But I’ve resolved to be comforting yet challenging. I have resolved to preach the full Word of God, and that’s exactly what Jesus does, and every once in a while, and this is what Lent does for us, it intervenes into our lives. When I talk about an intervention, remember an intervention is something blunt, something shocking, you’re confronted. And Jesus, like John the Baptist, John The Baptist was that type of a preacher. He minced no words. He got out there and he preached about repentance. Of course, repentance means to make a turn, turn away from your sin, and turn toward God. That’s what conversion is. You make a move toward God.
Conversion is initial, there can be a dramatic conversion, and then it’s ongoing. The Christian walk, discipleship, it’s a pilgrimage, an ongoing conversion of enlightenment and purification. Those are the two touchstones or foundation stones of Lent. We are being purified, and we are being enlightened. And every once in a while, Jesus kind of punches us in the nose. And then, with his genius, he tells a parable just to make sure we get the point. He didn’t pussyfoot around, but he has this creative genius. To farmers, he talked about seeds and plants and fig trees. Must have been a lot of farmers there that day. To fishermen, he talked about nets and boats and fish. To business people, he talked about money and coins and value. Jesus knew how to talk to people in the language of their time. He gave us a parable about a fig tree, a fig tree that wasn’t bearing fruit.
And so, the owner of the fig tree said, you know, I’ve waited for three years for this thing to bear fruit. I’ve waited a while for it to bear fruit, and it’s not, cut it down. This is the Son of God talking. And when he says cut it down, he means cut it down. But there’s a gardener. Thank you for the gardener. The gardener, of course, would be the Holy Spirit who intercedes for us, and the gardener says give it one more year. I will take care of it, I’ll put manure around it, I’ll put fertilizer on it, and then if it doesn’t grow, so he’s pleading for mercy, he’s pleading for a little more time. But then if it doesn’t happen, we’ll cut it down. You see, the purpose of a fig tree is to bear fruit. And it wasn’t bearing fruit, so why let it take up the ground? Let’s put something else in its place that will bear fruit.
And I read that book, «The Purpose Driven Life». It was by Rick Warren. Said that we were created on purpose for a purpose. We have a purpose, and this is what Jesus is driving at. The fig tree wasn’t blossoming, it wasn’t bearing fruit, it wasn’t achieving its purpose. So therefore, let somebody else take its place. And he’s telling us, look, God has given you time. And if you don’t achieve your purpose, if you don’t achieve what you were created to do, then you will be cut down. And then of course, there’s the Holy Spirit pleading for more time, the gardener, saying, please give them a little bit more time. Maybe you’re in that time now. In Jesus, by our faith in God, we have abundant purpose. And what is our purpose? Right from the scriptures. First command in the Bible. God said be fruitful and multiply.
Of course, that means have children, raise a big family, populate the earth, be fruitful. But fruitfulness has another definition, and it has more meaning. Fruitfulness in the Bible, remember what Jesus said, abide in me and I in you, and you will bear much fruit. Fruitfulness has to do with the pillars of Lent, the foundation of Lent being enlightenment and purification. And I want to keep harping on that because this is what Lent is about. And if we can live a significant Lent, a life-changing Lent, then we will be doing God’s will. And when we talk about enlightenment, that’s the first place that we can bear fruit. Enlightenment has to do with our relationship with God. Illumination, I’ve talked about prayer in other episodes.
And one of the areas that we need to pay attention to is going to church; listening to the Word of God; if you’re Catholic, celebrating Mass, going to confession, the sacraments, reading good books, reading spiritual books. It takes time, but God will give us time as long as he sees that we’re starting to bear fruit. Remember the gardener, let me work on 'em a little bit, let me work on her a little bit, and with some time, they will bear fruit. This parable is telling us be careful, it’s a warning, but it’s also a consolation that if we get with the program, if we strive in our relationship with God to be enlightened and illuminated, we give more time to prayer, that God will give us more time to develop.
Fruit takes time to develop. Fruit ripens, and God understands that. The number-one purpose that we have, the number-one area that we talk about when it comes to bearing fruit, we’re not fig trees, we’re human beings. The fruit that we’re talking about, be fruitful and multiply, of course, have children and have a family, but number-one, your relationship with God. That is what Lent is all аbout: enlightenment and illumination, and there are practical things we can do. I just enumerated some of them. And then purification. That’s what it means to bear fruit. Personal change. Character development. Moral purity. Paul puts it this way in his letter to the Galatians. He talks about the fruit of the Spirit. We’re talkin' about a tree that didn’t bear fruit, same for us.
God created us with a purpose, and our purpose isn’t just to live in self will. It’s to surrender to God’s will and to be fruitful. And what are the fruits of the Spirit? Love, peace, the joy of the Spirit, patience, kindness, goodness. It’s all there. This is the fruit. God’s not looking for figs, he’s looking for faithfulness, goodness, fruit. I think about patience for example. Patience is one of the great fruits of the Spirit. Patience only comes through suffering really. That’s how you get patience, by doing patience. And I think about what happened toward the end of my mother’s life. My mother lived to be 90 years old. But toward the end of her life, she wasn’t that mobile and she couldn’t hear that well, and this is something that a lot of Baby Boomers are going through.
I’m a Baby Boomer, late Baby Boomer. We’re having to deal with our aging parents, parents who have loved us and raised us and given us everything, and now the tables are turned, and we have to take care of them. We have to be their caregivers. It was very hard for me because I remember, I would talk to my mom and she wouldn’t be able to hear me, and I’d have to shout. I felt like I was losing patience. And other times, I’d be taking her to the doctor and have to wait in the waiting room and thinking I could be doing other things, and I remember one night, I got so frustrated when I went to bed. And I thought, you know, 'cause I was visiting her in Florida and going through all these hard things and feeling frustrated.
I remember praying to God. It’s like, why do I have to go through all this? All of a sudden, I got an image of my mother holding me as an infant at her breast and nursing me. When I didn’t even know where I was or who I was, my mom was taking care of me, and I got the message. It was like she loved me unconditionally. Can’t I at least love my own mother unconditionally. And that was an awakening for me. That was an intervention for me, that little image. And I began to bear fruit to be patient, to be loving, to be kind, to be good, to be humble. I love what it says in the prophet Micah, what does God require of you to do? Justice, to love Justice, and to walk humbly with your God.
This is what Lent calls us to, to become people of character and integrity and moral virtue. The fruit that God wants isn’t fig tree fruit. It’s not being a fig or an apple or an orange or a banana. It’s being faithful, humble, patient, loving. And then, along with purification, there’s the fruit of… now, we’ve already talked about the fruit of your relationship with God, really crucial; the fruit of purification, that’s enlightenment and purification, that’s Lent. And then, of course, adding value to others, realizing your potential.
When I talk about realizing your potential, it doesn’t mean that you realize the talents and the gifts that you have so that you can make a lot of money and go retire and live on your own. No, God gives us talents not for ourself, but to bear fruit for others, to add value to others, to help others, to be generous to others. Remember the last judgment. Happens in the first week of Lent. We hear this reading, Jesus comes as the Great Judge, there’s a great divide, all the nations are in front of him, and the decision about who goes to heaven and who doesn’t is by how we treated people. And we’ve got to get that. Lent is a time to get back to basics, and the basics has to do with people and how we’re treating people.
Christianity is a religion, sometimes we forget this, it’s a religion of love. And love is being generous, it’s being kind, it’s being merciful, it’s being respectful. And I’m praying that the Spirit of God will move in you. And let’s talk about the Spirit of God here for a minute. When it comes to bearing fruit, it’s the Holy Spirit who helps us. It’s not just, all right, I’m gonna be fruitful, I’m gonna be patient. It’s a work of the Holy Spirit. Remember, the Spirit is the gardener. Let me work with him. Let me work with her. Remember way back at the beginning of Lent, the Spirit throws Jesus into the desert, thrusts him into the desert, leads him into the desert. The beginning of Lent and Lent itself is a Spirit-anointed season.
A lot of times we make resolutions at the beginning of Lent. You know, I’m going to do this and I’m going to do that and I resolve to do it, and then about two weeks later, the resolution is by the books. Instead of resolution, we need revolution. And the Holy Spirit comes to revolutionize us, to change us inside and out. The Spirit is the Holy Spirit, that’s the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to make us holy, to sanctify us, to purify us. That is what Lent is: purification and enlightenment, and the Holy Spirit is the relationship with God that we develop who lives within us. It’s the Spirit’s work in us. I’m inviting you right at this moment as you’re watching, surrender to the Holy Spirit. Pray, and I love to pray, Lord, lead me, guide me, control me, motivate me, purify me, touch me with your love, illumine my heart.
Wow. The Holy Spirit will work in you, make you fruitful. I remember my dad, for example, great influence in my life, he used to sit and read to disadvantaged youth. And I thought that was beautiful. You’ll never read about him in a book, it’s not Mother Teresa, but what did he do? He took his own time and his efforts and he reached out and he tried to help somebody. And I think about a friend that I have up in Michigan, he, after he retired, he dedicated his life to Habitat for Humanity. He’ll never get any money back from that, no adulation, just trying to help people. Think about my dentist. My dentist gives us free medical care, free dental care in Houston. And he reached out to Casa Juan Diego here in Houston to be able to help the people who have come in from other countries who don’t have the money to have their teeth worked on, did it free of charge.
That’s the type of fruit that God wants. You might be thinking, well, I’m not a dentist and I don’t know how to build and what can I do? Well, I wrote down a few things. Some of you are older but you like sewing. You can sew quilts. I remember I came across some women who actually made prayer blankets for people who had cancer free of charge to comfort them. It’s, you know what blankets are, they’re comforters. And then you could bring groceries. You could visit people. You could teach CCD. Get involved, get involved. The Spirit always pushes us to participate, and that’s what it means to bear fruit. That’s what God is looking for, us bearing fruit, add value to others. Jesus’s words were very harsh, and you might think, well, I’ve lived all these years, nothing bad has ever happened to me, and sometimes we think we can be above the law. He’s saying repent or you’re going to be cut down. You don’t bear fruit, you will stop.
And you might think, well, I’m okay. He’s not gonna. Well, I thought that, too, about my life. Well, about a month ago, I was out riding on a bike, and going down the street, there were no cars in the street. I got distracted, I looked down to the side, and next thing I know, I look up and there was a concrete drain right in front of me. I hit the brakes real hard because I was going into it. And the brakes were trigger breaks, I mean, you just touch 'em and that bike just stopped. I flew over the handlebars, flew right onto the concrete with my chest, broke my left arm, bruised my elbow. I’ve got a broken arm as I’m preaching this right now. It’s healing, and I thought I cracked my chest wide open and I was about to die. I still have swelled knees, swelled arms, broken arm, bruised chest. And I came to realize that it can happen to anybody, even on a street when there’s no cars, even just riding a bike.
All of a sudden, life can end. I talked early on in one of my episodes about being motivated. Our mortality motivates us, guilt can motivate us, suffering can motivate us. I want to talk really quickly about the gardener. The gardener, I already named the gardener as the Holy Spirit pleading for more time. The gardener Interestingly says, let’s put some manure around it and give it another year. Manure? Fertilizer?
I grew up in Massachusetts, and we had farms all around our house. And at that certain time of year, they had tomatoes and strawberries right there in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts, suburb of Springfield right on the Connecticut border. That time of year, every once in a while, they’d, after they’d plant the seeds or right around that time, they would spread manure all around the farm. And I mean, when the wind blew, you could smell that manure, and it was stinky. Sometimes the manure in our life is smelly. It’s the hard circumstances that help us to grow. But it’s God, not giving it, but working through it to make us bear fruit.
Think about one of our priests who live in Houston. He’s now 78 years old. He had a second hip operation sometime ago. And his hip got infected. And it turned out really bad for him. He’s still not walking fully, needs to use a walker, and it’s been misery. It’s affected me, too, because I’ve had to try to take care of him in many different ways, learning patience, trying to be generous, but he gave a homily one time, recently actually, and he talked about his feeling of powerlessness because of what happened to him. And even though he felt powerless, he has learned to trust God more in his affliction, in his hardship. Sometimes there’s manure in our life, smelly circumstances, suffering.
Remember what I said about suffering? An intervention, that’s what causes change. But hopefully, it will lead to fruitful living. Lent is all about bearing fruit. And the fruit that we must bear, number one, your relationship with God. It’s not about figs and bananas and oranges. Number one, your relationship with God. Enlightenment, illumination. Number two, the fruit that we bear has to do with people and purification. We are becoming people of character. We’re on this journey from selfishness to selflessness, bearing the fruit of the Spirit, including patience. And then number three, add value to people. I can’t instill this in you enough or speak about this enough.
Lent and Christianity in general is all about people, how we respond to them, our goodness, our kindness, our generosity. And as you add value to people, one of the fruit of the Spirit is joy, and you will have that joy. We’re not used to Jesus speaking in such harsh terms, call it tough love, but he spoke in a way that proclaim truth. And you’re not used to me saying such things either, but I want to say this as clearly and as sincerely as possible: repent or you will be cut down. Bear fruit, be enlightened, be purified, and I pray the Holy Spirit will do a powerful work in you and you will bear abundant fruit. May Almighty God bless you. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.