31 December 2026 · Syro-Malankara Rite
Open in the Daily Word appAlso: Latin Rite · Syro-Malabar Rite · മലയാളം
“He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it.” Luke 13:8
On the last day of the year the Church reads one of the most hopeful parables. A man has a fig tree that has borne no fruit for three years. “Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?” But the gardener pleads: “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.” Christ is that gardener. Every new year is a gift of patience from God, and also a call to bear fruit.
Paul, near the end of Romans, describes his work as “the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.” He boasts only of what Christ has accomplished through him, in word and deed, from Jerusalem to Illyricum. As we close the year, we offer to God what he has done through us, and ask pardon for the fruit we failed to bear.
Theme: “One more year.”
God's patience and our fruit.
“rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,” Joel 2:13
“He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it.” Luke 13:8
Apply: Make an examination of conscience on the year.
“What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it?” Isaiah 5:4
“If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.” Luke 13:9
Apply: Choose one fruit to bear in the new year.
“So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart.” Psalm 90:12
“to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.” Romans 15:16
Apply: Attend a thanksgiving prayer tonight or tomorrow.
God gives us one more year.
Let it bear fruit for him.
Take-home resolution: Begin 2027 with a confession and one concrete resolution.
Dear friends, on the last day of the year St Paul looks back on his ministry: I have reason to boast in Christ Jesus of my work for God. For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me (Romans 15:17–18).
At the end of a year we look back too. What has Christ accomplished through us? Not what have I achieved, but what has God done through me? Paul's boasting is gratitude.
In the Gospel Jesus tells the parable of a fig tree that bore no fruit for three years. The owner says: cut it down. The gardener pleads: sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; if not, you can cut it down (Luke 13:6–9).
The new year is that one more year: a gift of God's patience. Christ, the gardener, pleads for us and works on our roots through trials, through his word and through the sacraments.
But the parable also carries urgency. God gives time so that we may bear fruit, not so that we may waste it. What fruit is God waiting for from me: reconciliation, prayer, generosity, purity, service?
Tonight let us do three things: thank God for all that Christ has done through us this year, ask pardon for our sins, and make one resolution for the new year. And let us begin the new year in the arms of the Child of Yaldo. Amen.
Children, God gives you a whole new year to grow and do good things. Thank Him tonight and ask Him to bless next year!
Lord Jesus, patient gardener, you have given us another year. Thank you for every grace of this year; forgive the fruit we did not bear; dig around our roots and make us fruitful in the year to come. Amen.
The year ends with a question about fruit. Paul looks back on years of work, and calls it all a priestly offering and the work of Christ, not his own. In Luke, a gardener begs for one more year for a barren fig tree. Together they teach us to look back with thanks and to look ahead with repentance, since another year is itself a mercy.
Setting.
Paul is coming to the end of his letter. He had not yet visited Rome, and has written boldly to a Church he did not found. He now explains why: his calling is to the Gentiles. He has worked from Jerusalem to Illyricum, the Roman province on the eastern coast of the Adriatic, and now plans to go on to Spain, by way of Rome (15:24). Acts does not tell of any work in Illyricum, so this verse is our only direct word on it.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.” (15:16)
Evangelising and worship are not two separate things. The aim of preaching is to bring people to God as an offering.
“For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me” (15:18)
Paul has the gift of looking back without boasting of himself. “Through me” is all he claims.
“Thus I make it my ambition to proclaim the good news, not where Christ has already been named, so that I do not build on someone else’s foundation,” (15:20)
Paul does not criticise those who build on others' foundations; he speaks of his own call. Yet the question is open to all of us: to whom has Christ not yet been named?
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism points out that in the New Testament the word “liturgy” refers not only to divine worship but also to proclaiming the Gospel and to active charity (CCC 1070), and it cites this verse. The Second Vatican Council uses this verse to describe the work of priests, whose preaching leads to the offering of the faithful, joined to the one sacrifice of Christ (Presbyterorum Ordinis 2).
Setting.
Just before this, people tell Jesus of Galileans killed by Pilate, and he himself mentions the people killed when the tower of Siloam fell. He says that these people were not worse sinners than others, and that all must repent (13:1–5). The parable follows at once, and shows why there is still time. The vine and the fig tree are familiar images of God's people in the prophets (Hosea 9:10; Micah 7:1), but here the words are addressed to every hearer who has heard the call to repent.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?” (13:7)
The owner's complaint is not unjust. The parable takes judgment seriously, and it does not make light of a life without fruit.
“Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it.” (13:8)
The gardener does not only ask for time. He promises to work. Many readers see Christ in him, the one who intercedes for us and works on us.
“If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.” (13:9)
Luke does not tell us what happened, and the parable stops here. The end of the story is left to the hearer.
How the Church reads it.
St Augustine takes the three years as the three ages of human history, before the Law, under the Law and under grace, and hears in the gardener the voice of those who plead for the Church (in substance, Sermon 110). St Gregory the Great sees in the manure the memory of one's sins, which brings the soul to repentance and fruitfulness (in substance, Homilies on the Gospels 31). The Catechism speaks of God's patience, who wants “all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9; CCC 1037), and calls conversion a turning of the whole life that is the work of God's grace (CCC 1431–1432).
Is God the harsh owner, and Jesus the kind gardener?
No. The parable is not setting the Father against the Son. The Son reveals the Father's own patience (2 Peter 3:9), and it is the Father who sends him. The owner and the gardener together teach two truths: God really looks for fruit, and God really gives us time.
On the last day of the year, this parable makes a good examination of conscience for a Malankara home or parish before the Holy Qurbono of the new year: what fruit has the year borne, what has been wasted, and what must I ask the Lord to dig around and feed in the coming year?