Ostium Catholic

A fig tree hasn't produced in three years, and the owner wants it cut down. The gardener asks for one more season, offering to cultivate and fertilize the ground rather than simply hoping it improves on its own. It's patience joined to actual effort, not patience as a substitute for effort.

Paul's image of the body, in the first reading, is worth holding next to the fig tree. Each part working properly, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, builds the whole body up in love. Growth in that image isn't the work of one heroic individual. It depends on a lot of ordinary, unglamorous parts doing their unglamorous jobs consistently, the same patient cultivation the gardener offers the fig tree rather than a single dramatic fix.

Most workplaces have someone, maybe including yourself, currently playing the part of the fig tree: underperforming, close to being written off, in need of one more real season of investment rather than either indulgent patience or premature cutting. It's worth being honest about which side of that you're more prone to erring on, cutting people off too fast, or extending patience indefinitely without ever actually cultivating anything.

Name one underperforming area, a project, a team member, or honestly yourself, where the right move this week is neither patience alone nor immediate cutting, but actual cultivation.

Cultivation takes more effort than either extreme. Cutting is fast, and patience without action requires nothing at all. The gardener's actual work, digging, fertilizing, showing up again next season, is the harder middle path, and it's the one the parable actually recommends.

Identify one underperforming area at work, possibly your own, and take one specific cultivating action this week rather than simply waiting to see if it improves.

Lord, give me the gardener's patience joined to real effort, not patience as an excuse to avoid doing the work of cultivation. Amen.