Just as a skilled master, to teach the untrained and to make the slow understand, strikes his disciples' senses with a varied kind of teaching, rouses and kindles their wit, so the Lord by various likenesses and diverse comparisons calls and invites to the Gospel hearing the sluggish and slow minds of the peoples; for thus today he began: 'A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it, and found none. And he said to the vinedresser: Behold, these three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none.'
'Cut it down; why does it even take up the ground?' But he answered and said to him, 'Lord, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure; and if indeed it bears fruit, well; but if not, next year you shall cut it down' (Luke 13). 'A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard.' I ask: what is so plain, what so clear, what so common, what so native to country folk, yet what so proper to the learned, as the form of the parable set before us? For arising from ordinary experience, it both instructs all by its word and converts them by its example. A fruitless tree tangles the turf, kills the open spaces, drains the strength of the earth, brings loss upon the farmer, and afflicts its owner with weariness; and so to cut it down is a gain, and not to have it is an advantage.
So too, surely, the man who by barren and worthless deeds overturns, usurps, and drowns the gift of nature, the endowment of the soul, the benefit of reason, the excellence of the senses, the judgment of the mind, the industry of skill, and the good of cultivation, and who denies fruit to his Author and gratitude to his Cultivator — just as a tree deserves to be cut off from the ground, so such a man deserves to be cut off from life. And as an unfruitful tree, if it be in a vineyard, while it spreads a deadly shade over the vines beneath it, becomes an enemy not to itself alone but even to the fruitful branches, so an idle and slothful man, if he be set over peoples, becomes harmful not to himself alone but to many, while by his own example he corrupts and ruins those who follow him. But let us hear why the Lord spoke this similitude.
The fig tree, when the wintry season has passed, while it puts forth its unripe figs into blossom and counterfeits its fruit with its blossoms, deceives the unwary and mocks the ignorant. For soon it casts off the unripe figs, comes slowly to bud, and bursts into leaf; and it becomes last of all in fruit, though it seemed to have gone before all the rest. Rightly therefore is the Synagogue compared by the Lord to a fig tree, which, warmed in the time of the Law, in a temporary way blossomed in the figure of ecclesiastical fruit. For rooted firmly in the Patriarchs, exalted by the priestly summit, spread wide by the prophetic branches, and filled with the unripe figs of Jewish observance, it flourished — then destined to give fruit through Christ by hope alone, nay rather to give Christ Himself after the fruit, as the Psalmist says:
'Of the fruit of your womb I will set upon your throne' (Ps. 131). Whence the saints, knowing these things, drew hope of fruit from the blossom, and consoled themselves in present things with things to come: seeing that now, at any moment, eternal things were succeeding to mortal, perpetual to transient, grace to the Law, the Church to the Synagogue, heavenly things to earthly, divine to human, and to all men Christ; and because with long patience they awaited His coming, they rejoiced with faithful joy that He had come. Of these was that Simeon, to whom it had been promised that he should not see death until he saw the Christ of the Lord, whom, holding in his arms, he burst forth into such a cry: 'Now you dismiss your servant, Lord, according to your word, in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation' (Luke 2).
But the ignorant, while they put their whole confidence in the Law, and were neither anxious for the expectation of Christ, nor deserved to receive Christ, nor to acknowledge Him — thus they were deceived by the little flowers of the Law, just as, so to speak, the fig tree deceives with its unripe figs. Hence it is that the Lord sends to the fig tree those who desire to know the times of His coming, saying: 'Behold the fig tree and all the trees. When they now bring forth fruit, you know that summer is near; so also you, when you see these things come to pass, know that the kingdom of God is near' (Luke 21). You see that the fig tree does not signify present things, but thus points to things to come. But now let us pursue the parable set before us in order. 'A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard.'
The Synagogue is the fig tree; the owner of the tree is Christ; the vineyard in which this tree is reported to be planted is the people of Israel, as the prophet Isaiah says: 'The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel' (Isa. 5). 'He came,' it says, 'seeking fruit on it, and found none.' Christ came, and found in the Synagogue no fruit of faith, because the whole was overshadowed by the deceits of faithlessness. Christ came to the fig tree, to which, we read, Adam fled naked after his fault, as the book of Genesis says: 'And they knew that they were naked, and they sewed together fig leaves, and made themselves aprons' (Gen. 3). Christ therefore came to the fig tree, that He might find Adam, that He might cover the naked man with the pious garment of His own body — the man whose shame the fig tree did not veil but goaded;
for this very fig tree, that is, the Synagogue, by its circumcisions bared the shameful part of the body, and did not cover it. 'He came,' it says, 'seeking fruit, and found none. And he said to the keeper of the vineyard: Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none; cut it down.' The keeper of the vineyard, who is commanded to cut down the unfruitful fig tree, is the angel who presides over the Synagogue, who, since he cannot excuse its barrenness, by supplication obtains a reprieve. But this must not be passed over, that he said: 'Behold, these three years.'
Three years are the three seasons through which Christ came to the Synagogue to seek fruit, that is, through the Law, through the Prophets, and through His own bodily presence — that the unfruitful fig tree, which was already refusing to the Godhead fruit as though not necessary, might not refuse necessary food to man, to the hungry, to Christ about to eat. But now let us hear what the keeper of the vineyard answered. 'Lord, let it alone this year also.' The keeper of the vineyard prays that yet a year of the Gospel season be granted; of which Isaiah says: 'To preach the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of retribution' (Isa. 61). To what end? 'Until I dig around it.' He wishes to dig it through with the apostolic ploughshare, because it could not feel the tilling of the legal knife. 'And I will put on manure.'
So great manuring is necessary for the root which, for all the fatness of the holy turf, warmed and watered by the heavenly rain, did not deserve to be fruitful. The barren fig tree, the wretched Synagogue, is manured by the mercy of the Gentiles, that, helped by the vilest fomentations, it may return to fruit — it which departed from fruit though with so rich and precious a breast; and if after this it remain in the same barrenness, it shall now be cut down, hopeless and useless, not by the pruner's sickle, but by the axe of the very Sovereign. And therefore he did not say, 'Next year I will cut it down,' but 'You shall cut it down,' according to that word of John: 'Now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bring forth good fruit shall be cut down and cast into the fire' (Matt. 3).
Because after the cultivation of the Gospel season, the axe of judgment shall cut down the unfruitful trees, and the final conflagration shall receive and burn them.