Patristic Wisdom: Looking to the Third Sunday in Lent

He also spoke this parable: “A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. Then he said to the keeper of his vineyard, ‘Look, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none. Cut it down; why does it use up the ground?’ But he answered and said to him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it. And if it bears fruit, well. But if not, after that you can cut it down.’ ” (Luke 13:6–9)

If you look closely, you will find that the laws of this species deviate from those of other trees. The others carry their flower before their fruit, and announce the fruits to come by the promise of the flower; only this one produces from the beginning fruits in place of flowers. In others the flower falls and fruits are born; in this one the fruits fall to give place to the fruits. Thus, these first trials of fruits grow as flowers; and to have, in their early birth, misunderstood the order of nature, they can not preserve the benefit of nature. Indeed, it is at the point where usually the bud grows from the middle of the bark that the small fruits of this species come to dawn. It is from them that we read, in the Song of Songs, "the fig tree grows its first fruits" (2:13). Thus, when the other trees are white in early spring, the only fig tree can not bleach by its flowers, perhaps because there is no maturity to expect from these kinds of fruits. For others arise, and these, as degenerates, are rejected; their weak stem dries up, and they give way to those for whom the sap will be more useful. There are, however, some, very rare, that do not fall, having had the good fortune to emerge on a short stem, between two palmettes: thus doubly covered and protected, as in mother nature, a more abundant sap fed them and developed them. These, helped by the clemency of the air and the temperature, having had more leisure to form, become, once stripped the natural wild of their primitive juice, preferable to the others by their beauty and the approval of their maturity. Now consider the manners and dispositions of the Jews: they are like the first fruits of the little fertile Synagogue; as the first fig falls, they have fallen, to make room for the fruits of our race that will remain forever. For the first people of the synagogue, weakly rooted in parched works, failed to draw the rich sap of natural wisdom: so it fell, like a useless fruit, so that on the same branches of the tree the fruit of ancient religion produced the new people of the Church. Thus he who was ceased to be, so that he who was not begin. Yet the best of Israel, those who wore a more vigorously conformed branch, in the shadow of the Law and the Cross, and within them, were stained with a double sap, and, as the first fig came to mature, these beautiful fruits outweigh all others. It is to them that it is said: "You shall sit on twelve thrones to judge the twelve tribes of Israel" (Matt 19:28).

Ambrose Commentary on Luke 13