Bear Good Fruit The first part of our Gospel leaves a lot of room to fill in the blanks! We don’t know anything about the two tragic events reported in the gospel. Jesus uses these events as teachable moments. These events involve tragic death, and Jesus uses these tragedies to make absolute that unless we repent, we also will die! Then, using the parable of the fig tree, Jesus reveals the patience of God with us, despite our slowness to repent.This is God’s work of mercy; to take what is almost dead and coax it to new life. [Living Liturgy 2010] Standing secure in the graciousness of the new life God offers us does not mean that we don’t need to cooperate with God to cultivate and fertilize our spiritual lives. God waits for us to bear fruit. God waits each and every day of our lives for us to bear fruit. The Good News is; God never gives up on us. All we need to do is respond by dying to self and God brings forth new life in us. Musical Reflection
Remain in Christ My father, an avid gardener, told me one time about a cucumber plot he had planted:He had been very careful to select the best seeds, and plant each one at its proper depth. He fertilized and watered the plants, he worked the soil faithfully each week to prevent weeds from encroaching and he sprayed to prevent bugs and blights from afflicting the young plant. The season was a good one – just the right amount of rain and sunshine, and on the vines appeared broad green leaves and in due course the blooms. It looked magnificent. One day he noticed that here and there certain leaves were dying, certain blooms fading. Most of the leaves remained a healthy glossy green, but scattered among them were those turning brown. Why, he wondered, would some die in the midst of all the living? So he investigated. Stepping carefully among the tangled mass of vines he traced the ones on which the leaves and blooms were dying, until he found that they were all connected to a single stem. There, just above the ground, cut-worms had severed the stalk. The entire vine above that point was dying because it was no longer attached to the roots and the stem that had produced it. It is a common tale – but it is an instructive one. This Sunday’s Gospel is about pruning and bearing fruit. Bearing fruit requires pruning. The pruning tool is the Word of the Son. His word teaches us and guides us. Allowing this word to shape us brings forth a life-giving relationship with Jesus that assures abundant and good fruit. Our life flows from Christ’s life. We are grafted onto him, receive our life from him and are shaped as faithful disciples by his word. Remaining in Christ has its demands. To remain in Christ means that we live as Jesus lived-in deed and truth. Being the branch grafted onto Christ’s life is very real and demands that we allow ourselves to be pruned. This is what Easter is all about: new life in Christ.