Why Holy Week has Fig Monday

The day after Palm Sunday is called Fig Monday. Having a day named after a fruit is a delightful bit of Catholic culture arising from St. Mark’s observation that, on the day after Palm Sunday, Christ cursed a fruitless fig tree. It’s such an odd story and yet it fits in just right with the shape of the liturgical year, bringing to a conclusion an ancient and mysterious theme found in the Scriptures.

As St. Mark tells it, the morning after Palm Sunday, Our Lord is hungry, so when he spies a fig tree in the distance he approaches it looking for figs to eat. Even though it isn’t the right season for figs, as everybody well knew. It would be like looking for apples on my tree in St. Louis in January (or flowers in the desert in winter). The tree is obviously fruitless. Our Lord curses it and then proceeds on his way to empty the temple of money-changers.

On the way back, he and his disciples pass the same fig tree, which is now withered. Christ stops under the skeletal branches and begins to teach his disciples about prayer. That’s the end of it. As I said, it’s an eccentric story.

At first, it makes very little sense. The details are all wrong, as in, why would the tree be cursed for not having fruit out of season? In being fruitless, it was behaving as any fig tree ought to behave. Why does St. Mark even share this story, seemingly shoving these random details in around the much more important story about the cleansing of the temple? And what does any of it have to do with prayer?

When I looked up other instances of figs appearing in the Bible, it became even more interesting. In the poetic literature of the Old Testament, figs are symbols of abundance. They represent a people who are thriving.

We’re specifically told in Genesis that Adam and Eve wore fig leaves on their way out of Eden after they had sinned.

Before he is called to follow Jesus, Nathaniel is sitting under a fig tree.

St. John, in his apocalypse, has a vision of stars falling from the sky like figs from the branch when shaken by a strong wind.

If figs represent the abundance of the Kingdom of God, that’s why fig leaves protect Adam and Eve even in their disgrace, and why Nathaniel being near one is a sign that he is primed and ready to meet the Savior, or why St. John equates the falling of the fig to the end of the world.

Somehow, it’s all wrapped up with the fruitfulness of prayer.

This is where my research grinds to a halt. Now, we’re no longer engaged in the whimsical lark of looking into why the Church has a day called Fig Monday. Now, I’m confronted by Christ himself, under the withered tree, asking me just what I intend to do about my fruitless prayer life.

I’m a barren fig tree. Instead of making fruit, I make excuses. I complain that I don’t feel close to God but neglect to make space for him with consistent prayer. Instead, I insist I’ll do better tomorrow, or that when life slows down and gets easier, I’ll pray more. When the kids grow up and move out I’ll have more free time and then I’ll be be more attentive and disciplined. I’ll grow figs when the weather gets better, I promise. It just isn’t the right season yet.

There are always convincing reasons for why our spiritual lives become fruitless. We’re expert excuse-makers. We can do it with anything -- right now isn’t the time but someday I’ll chase my dream, start exercising, be serious about getting married, read more, eat healthier, sleep better, go visit grandma in the nursing home ... it’s like saying maybe tomorrow I’ll start to really live.

Our Lord has no patience for that. It’s now or never, he says. Delay is to willingly accept a curse to forever be fruitless. To make his point absolutely, crystal clear, he marches straight off to the temple to purify it by whatever means are necessary and make space again for God’s presence.

The way St. Mark writes about these events makes clear he intuits a connection between the two. The fig tree and the cleansing of the temple are written using a literary device called a “sandwich.” He places one story inside another as if between two slices of bread. The story on the inside interprets the story that has been split in two.

So, if we are feeling the frustration of a fruitless prayer life, and when we struggle to be consistent and dedicated in our spiritual devotion, St. Mark has a proposal – invite Christ in to do a housecleaning. On our own, we are like Adams and Eves fleeing the wreckage of our bad choices and delayed promises. We clutch our fig branches on the way out of paradise. Our continued excuses are harmful and condemn us to spiritual barrenness. We feel the weight of those excuses and they bring us to a halt before we even begin to try. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

The only solution is to place Christ back at the center. Allow him to pray in us. We’ve been trying to do it on our own for so long, and it isn’t working. Allow Christ in to remove all the what-ifs and dreams untried so that he can become a new, strong tree of life growing within.

Fig Monday is the revelation that, with prayer, impossible changes can take place within us. The promise of new life starts right now.