“I learn a lot about the character of my men by how they pick fruit,” says Bishop Joseph Tyson of the Diocese of Yakima, explaining that his “Calluses to Chalices” formation program requires seminarians to live and work alongside migrant farmworkers picking fruit in the summer. “Many of these guys, if they’d have to pick fruit for a living, they’d starve to death—they’re terrible at it,” he says. “Others, though, have already done this before. They grew up in a farm family; they grew up in a migrant family, and they kind of know the drill.”
Bishop Tyson, reflecting on the message of the Parable of the Barren Fig Tree in the Gospel for the Third Sunday of Lent, draws a parallel between the seminarians’ labor and the fruitfulness of their spiritual lives. In this episode, recorded around the time of Pope Francis’ recent letter to U.S. bishops, Bishop Tyson—also Episcopal Liaison for the Catholic Climate Covenant and Episcopal Moderator for the Catholic Migrant Farmworker Network—speaks candidly with “Preach” host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., about the urgent need for bishops to address public policies that harm marginalized communities.
“I become better—a better bishop and a better priest, and better to my men—precisely because I want to generate love for the migrant who’s passing through this diocese” he says. “We’ve got to find a way of preaching and teaching that better.”
Bishop Tyson recalls a moment when he discovered that some seminarians had taken a break apart from the workers. Noticing this, the migrant workers invited them to join in the shade and share their food. “When you’re ordained a priest, you’ll prepare the table for them,” Bishop Tyson told his seminarians. “But you start by being at their table.”
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Scripture Readings for the Third Sunday of Lent, Year C
First Reading: Ex 3:1-8a, 13-15
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 103: 1-2, 3-4, 6-7, 8, 11
Second Reading: 1 Cor 10:1-6, 10-12
Gospel: Lk 13:1-9
You can find the full text of the readings here.
A Homily the Third Sunday of Lent, Year C, by Bishop Joseph Tyson
Peace be with you!
What do you do about a tree that doesn’t produce fruit?
That is not only a question about fig trees at the time of Jesus: It is also a reality here in central Washington, where we grow apples, pears, apricots, cherries, nectarines, peaches, and grapes.
My mom’s favorite cousin, Sonny, grew cherries for over 25 years. Cherries are perhaps one of the more fickle and delicate fruits to grow. Too much rain and the cherries split. Too much wind and the cherries bruise. Too much frost and the cherries fail to bud. Too much heat and the cherries end up looking like dried raisins.
Harvesting cherries also takes great care. When I was little, cherries generally peaked around the 4th of July. Today, perhaps due to climate change, they tend to peak a bit earlier, sometime in the final weeks of June. Our farm workers get up early to get out on the fields, picking the cherries during the cooler morning hours. Why? Because the midday heat sends the natural sugars of the fruit back into the tree. Thus, workers stop picking cherries in the early afternoon.
And the fruit itself has to be pulled off the branch with a certain finesse from the top of the stem, where the cherry cluster meets the branch. They have to be gingerly placed in the bag, and the bags can be opened from the bottom to be gently released into the bin in order to prevent any of the cherries being bruised.
If there is one word that might connect the cultivation of figs in our Gospel with the cultivation of cherries today, that one word might be this: Patience.
Patience.
Note the details of this exchange between the owner and the farm worker tending the fig tree. The owner notes that there’s been no fruit the previous two years, and now we’re into a third. The owner suggests to the farm worker that it’s time to cut the tree down, but the farm worker pleads for patience. Patience. He suggests that he will tend and nurture the fig tree one more year. Then, if there is no fruit, he will take the tree down.
Saint Augustine, preaching the same text, suggests, “This tree is the human race. The Lord visited this tree in the time of the patriarch, as if for the first year. He visited it in the time of the law and the prophets, as if for the second year. Here we are now; with the Gospel the third year has dawned.”
This fig tree is about us. God is patient with us. God tends us. God nurtures us. But do we bear fruit?
As Bishop, I’ve become famous for requiring my seminarians to pick fruit. “Calluses to Chalices” is what my men affectionately call it. One year, a comment about one of our men floated back to me from one of the workers. No se ven las zancas del pollito. It roughly translates as, “The feet of the little chick aren’t visibly moving.” It dawned on me that she was talking about one of the seminarians whose feet weren’t moving and whose hands weren’t picking.
He’s not a seminarian anymore. We cut ‘em down. Circling back to the insights from Saint Augustine, note the detail of how the farm hand nurtures the fig tree: manure. Manure, suggests Saint Augustine, is a symbol of humility. To grow and bear fruit, we have to be as humble as the manure.
The comment from this farm worker in the cherry orchard, a working mom picking cherries to supplement the family income, suggested to me that this seminarian didn’t want to get his hands dirty. He didn’t really want to engage the “humus” of the earth, and he certainly wasn’t going to deal with any manure. He wasn’t humble.
Our parishioners who work the fields work hard. Manny Villafan, our current vice president of Catholic Charities and chief operating officer, got his start working the hop fields. He recalled last week that as a child, they could taste the pesticides in their mouths. “Leche de chocolate,” they often joked. “Chocolate milk.”
If we are to elevate the bread and wine, gifts of the earth and work of human hands, then those we want to be priests in the Diocese of Yakima need to know the weight of labor that goes onto the paten and into the chalice. At the end of the summer, I dismissed my seminarian. He didn’t bear fruit. Literally.
Last week, I saw Julie. She’s Sonny’s daughter—the daughter of my mom’s favorite cousin. I asked her about the cherry orchard. How was it going? My mom died about two years ago, and Sonny died during COVID. She told me that after they sold the cherry orchard, the orchard became infected with a viral disease called “little cherry disease.” It is usually caused by grafting infected cherry branches onto cherry trees.
Perhaps the new owners didn’t have the care that Sonny did for his trees. Perhaps they didn’t have the patience the farmhand suggested to the owner of the parable about Jesus and the fig tree. Perhaps all of us can take from this parable the importance of being patient with ourselves, with those around us, especially in these times, when it’s easier to tear people down and to tear apart institutions that we judge as unproductive.
Perhaps all of us can take from this parable the importance of being humble, doing the lowest of tasks for our friends and our family, including spreading manure, and perhaps putting up with the manure they spread in our lives. Perhaps we can imitate the attitude of the farm worker who lovingly and patiently tends this fig tree, a tree he doesn’t even own, simply out of the hope of seeing fruit one day.
Peace be with you.
