Saturday of 23rd week OT “Every tree can be told by its own fruit ; people ,do not pick thorns from figs, nor gather grapes from brambles. People draw what is good from the store of goodness in their hearts; bad people draw what is bad from the store of badness. For the word of the moth flow out of what fills the heart.”
Jesus presents to his disciples what their life is to be like by giving the image of the good tree which bears good fruit. It is quite obvious that the image of bad tree cannot give goods fruits by itself. This image speaks to each one of us as well as to the whole Christian community, for an examination of conscience.This is especially telling when we complain about the few fruits we can see around us.
God alone is Good and we can only become so through Him.
The Church is rooted in the Heart of God who loves the poor who now they receive from one another. Their poverty lies in this.
Christians are grafted onto God in a mysterious manner through Jesus Christ. A graft is a lovely image of the mystery within us. Let’s imagine a rose bush which gives off only thorns, if this is the case, we cut it down at its roots. We can then graft onto it a cutting from a lovely rose bush. These two ’open wounds’ when they come into contact with one anther, will little by little turn the wild rose bush into a wonderful rose tree. If the graft takes, we then have a beautiful rose bush giving off lovely roses!
"Why do you call me ’Lord, Lord’ and not do what I say?
Everyone who comes to me and listens to my words and acts on them-I will show you what a person is like. Such a person is like the man who, when he built a house, dug, and dug deep, and laid the foundations on rock; when the river was in flood it bore down on that house but could not shake it, it was so well built."
Goodness and badness have nothing to do with peoples’ temperament nor with exterior conditions. They are intimately linked to the heart. It is on the
level of the hart that the hard struggle between good and evil come into play, between Faith and pride. And also between being ’good or ’bad’.
Our life is in the open wound of Jesus’ Heart on the Cross. An absolutely wonderful graft which God in his Tenderness has provoked.
Jesus took on flesh of the Virgin Mary as Eve was born out of the wound of Adam’s side. Mary, the ne Eve, was born from the wound in the Heart of Jesus.
God has us be deeply rooted in Mary’s Heart at the foot of the Cross. Jesus’ Cross is for us the source of a new life, of a life as a child of God. This new Life is lived out in Mary’s faith. It is filial cordial adhesion through Christ to the Heart of the Father.
Through baptism we are grafted onto Christ. Our house is built on the Rock, Christ. Christ has his ’roots’ in the Heart of the Father. There is no fear, no one can take anything away from the Heart of the Father.
We give thanks for this new tree that bears fruit.
“But someone who listens and does nothing is like the man who built a house on soil, with no foundations; as soon as the river bore down on it, it collapsed ; and what a ruin that house became!”
No one can say they are exempt from sin, weakness, misery even on the outside. Jesus asks us to be attentive to our hearts, in fact from our hearts come the way we behave, and the orientation of our whole life!
Good remarks come out of a naturally good heart.
The whole of our inner life has to be concentrated around how to change our hearts : before all else it is a question of uprooting any bad instinct, any closeness, lack of openness, and above all pride which leads to a deceitful self sufficiency.
The edification of our own life, just as much as that of the Christian community, is rooted in the listening in the Word of God, leaving it to be deposited in our heart so it will bear fruit.
The Words of the Gospel, welcomes and put into practice every day are like the foundations of a house. Each day they need to nourish our life, our thoughts, our decisions, our actions. We always have to keep listening to them
so as to make of them the living basis upon which our daily lie is constructed. It is made solid as the river of Evil which keeps on coming down upon us.
God is the God of the poor, the Church is the house of God, it is the house of the poor who have Christ. Our life is no longer one of a wild child but one of someone in Christ. A good gardener knows how there can be ’offshoots ’that avoid the graft so as to take the sap themselves.
The way of checking if the graft is working with Christians is the communion they have with one another. Our communion is in the Blood of Christ, the sap’ of this new tree has taken on Body in the heart and body of the Virgin Mary.