Dante says that Luke is the ‹‹scriba mansuetudinis Christi››. Indeed, he is the Evangelist who loves to emphasize the mercy of the Master towards sinners and presents us with scenes of forgiveness (Lk 7: 36-50; 23: 39-43). In Luke’s Gospel the mercy of God is manifested in Jesus Christ. We can say that Jesus is the incarnation of the merciful presence of God among us. “Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate” (Lk 6: 36). Luke focuses on an image of God already revealed in the Old Testament (Ex 34: 6), but which, unfortunately, seems to have been ignored by the scribes and Pharisees who stressed the image of a God “who visits the sins of the fathers on the children” (Ex 34: 7).

The text of the third Sunday of Lent puts before us two different but related facts: Jesus comments on the events of the day and He narrates a parable. Luke 13: 1-5: At the people’s request, Jesus comments on the events of the day: the massacre of pilgrims by Pilate and the massacre at the tower of Siloam where eighteen people were killed. Luke 13: 9: Jesus tells a parable about the fig tree that bore no fruit.

A few days earlier, Jesus had said that He, the Son of Man, had to be tried and crucified by the authorities (Lk 9: 22; Mk 8: 31). According to the information in the gospels of Mark and Matthew, the disciples, especially Peter, did not understand what Jesus had said and were scandalized by the news (Mt 16: 22; Mk 8: 32). Jesus reacted strongly and turned to Peter calling him Satan (Mt 16: 23; Mk 8: 33). This was because Jesus’ wordsdid not correspond with the ideal of the glorious Messiah whom they imagined. Luke does not mention Peter’s reaction and Jesus’ strong reply, but he does describe, as do the other Evangelists, the episode of the Transfiguration.

Luke, with the refinement of a narrator, mentions in 4: 1-44 some aspects of the ministry of Jesus after His baptism, among them the temptations of the devil. In fact, he says that Jesus, “Filled with the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert, for forty days” (Lk 4: 1-2). Such an episode in the life of Jesus is something preliminary to His ministry, but it can also be understood as the moment of transition from the ministry of John the Baptist to that of Jesus.