Wednesday of 12th week, even numbered year
“Beware of false prophets who come to you disguised as sheep but underneath are ravenous wolves. You will be able to tell them by their fruits. Can people pick grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles?”
Jesus places us before a new image of bad and good trees. We could believe in these simplistic declarations, but they are not this at all. It is just like our every day life when the reality that is lived out is not simplistic either.
There are good trees that degenerate and end up giving bad fruit and there are also bad trees that change and give off good fruits.
The good is good, the one who does good doesn’t get tired, and does not yield to temptation to do evil.
Jesus suffered from those who took on the appearance of God’s messengers and who belong to the liar! They have put on a shepherd’s clothing and ’within’ are voracious wolves. What is seen is perversion from the inside, but we can recognise them in their evil acts.
Thus Jesus takes the image of nature, that of the tree bearing fruits to have us grow in goodness.
We need a close gaze, one that is ’an accomplice’ to contemplate another person, be moved and stop before him, each time it is necessary to do so. Thus, we wish to make the perfume close to Jesus and his personal gaze present.
We initiate ourselves to this ’art of discernment’ in order to learn to always take off our sandals before the sacred earth of other people.
“In the same way, a sound tree produces good fruit but a rotten tree bad fruit. A sound tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor a rotten tree bear good fruit.”
It is in the fear of God that the vine of the Lord is kept and the goodness too through good works.
Out of experience, what is good is recognised as such, thanks to acts and not words.
Jesus has reclothed our humanity so as to make it ’good’, bearing fruits of love and of concord.
Out of God’s creation we are educated by God’s goodness, He who gives good chances to his children!
More than ever in our life, in the docility to the Holy spirit, the experience of accompaniment gives us prudence, the capacity of comprehension, so as to protect the sheep given to us, wolves who try to disperse the flock.
We need to exert the art of listening, which is more than the fact of hearing. In communication with others, the capacity of the heart makes proximity possible, without which a true spiritual encounter does not exist.
“Any tree that does not produce good fruit is cut down and thrown on te fire. I repeat, you will be able to tell them by their fruit.”
By his Passion and Resurrection, Jesus came to destroy evil within us, destroying it at its root. Come back from the dead, he delivers us from fear and of death. We can from now recognise him by his gentleness and humility.
Jesus ahs us bear fruits of Peace and of Love.
The fact of listening helps us to discover the gesture and suitable word that takes us out of being tranquil spectators.
In the end, it is only from this respectful listening, capable of being compassionate, that we can find the ways for genuine growth.
To fully respond to God’s Love with the thirst of developping the best of what God has sown in our own life.
Faith becomes viable by the bias of our actions : ’So show me your faith which does not act: I show you my faith through my acts’ says Saint James.