Bear Fruit

June 17, 2012

11^th Sunday of Ordinary Time B

By Rev. Joe McCloskey, SJ

I, too, will take from the crest of the cedar, from its topmost branches tear off a tender shoot, and plant it on a high and lofty mountain; on the mountain heights of Israel I will plant it.  It shall put forth branches and bear fruit, and become a majestic cedar.  Ezekiel 17:22-23a

"This is how it is with the kingdom of God; it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land and would sleep and rise night and day and through it all the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how.  Of its own accord the land yields fruit, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.  And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once, for the harvest has come."  Matthew 4:26-29

Piety

God takes our nothingness and makes something of it.  The richness of piety is the making of the ordinary extraordinary.  The hidden life grace makes sense of how the mustard seed of our simplicity becomes the rock foundation of our life of grace.  Grace is the acceptance of God’s friendship into us.  It opens us up when we accept God’s friendship.  The impossible becomes  possible because nothing is impossible with our acceptance of God’s love for us.  The only limitation on God’s love in our life is found in our acceptance of ourselves as wonderful in who we are in God’s love for us.  Christ speaks to our hearts in the goodness of people around us.  He claims our response in the good we can do for each other.  Our goodness shines in our making others more important than ourselves.

Study

The justice, peace and joy of the Holy Spirit are what we study in ourselves and each other.  In Christ we can deserve God’s love.  Christ died for us and when we die with him, we rise in the love of God in the Spirit that claims our hearts.  We no longer live, but Christ lives in who we are.  Peace is the tranquility of order and the security we have in God’s love for us in his Son opens us to a peace that is the security known by living in God’s love for us in his Son.  The spark of God’s love for us is the flame of fire seen in our passionate love of Christ.  Our hearts recognize Christ in each other.  We learn to love our enemies because Christ has loved us and we live his love for each other in what we do for the least one of our brothers and sisters.  We study the victory of Christ and learn to recognize the signs of the victory in the power the resurrection has in the desire to do right that his victory over death offers to every heart whether Christ is known of not.  Christ makes of the goodness of anyone  his victory.

Action

The seed that grows in our hearts whether we are aware of it or not is the victory of Christ reflected in the light of goodness that touches our lives in the kindnesses of our friends and strangers.  Christ takes the tender shoots of our piety and plants it in the efforts of our lives to do well.   Christ opens our heart by the challenge of his dying for us to love even as he has loved us by offering our lives for the needs of the world.  God lifts on high our lowly efforts and makes something out of the nothingness that we would be without him by making us his presence in the world today.  We aspire to please him by living out in our lives what he would do if he were us.  He loves us so much that in our baptism he has become all of us and he asks us to be all of ourselves in following him.  He would be the completion of all we try.  He blesses our intentions to do good by making what we try to do of good the good his sees in us.  He will be our recompense for all the good we would do.