Fr Prodencio Bognay, Assistant Priest at St Agnes’ Catholic Parish, reads from the Gospel of Luke (13: 1-9) in which Jesus tells the parable of the Fig tree where the gardener asks the owner of the Vineyard to ‘Leave the fig tree one more year’.Fr Prodencio notes that, during the time of Jesus, death was seen as punishment to sin. Those who died in an accident or slaughtered by enemies were believed to be more sinful compared to those who died a natural death.Being a Galilean himself, Jesus seemed to have been tested by those who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with that of their sacrifices. It was a message loaded with mockery and condemnation. The response of Jesus was, however, a message of compassion with a strong warning against self-righteousness.How easy it is for us to measure other people around us and think of how God should deal with them. In doing this however, we become preoccupied with someone else’s life, and we lose sight of our own life.Fr Prodencio says one reason why we fail to recognize the great compassion of God is when we lose sight of our own personal spiritual journey. We might have been given a lot of chances in our life to make things right like the fig tree that was spared by its caretaker, but if we lose sight of our own personal journey, we can fail to recognize even as many as millions of chances we receive.Concluding his reflection, Fr Prodencio encourages us to continue reflecting on how we can be more aware of what’s going on with our own personal spiritual journey.