I am the vine; you are the branches.
Whoever remains in me and I in him,
will bear much fruit. – Jn 15:5
I was reading the Sunday gospel meditation in The Better
Part (Meditation 42) where I read the above line. And something new struck me.
I had a focus of late on helping others, and in my mind, I
was thinking that I was bearing some fruit.
I was hearing His word, taking it to heart, and doing good things ---
bearing fruit. But, … read the above
Scripture words again. I “will bear much
fruit.” Think on that. What is good fruit good for? Fruit is good for two purposes. One, it falls to the ground and seeds within
the fruit sprout, take root and a new plant is generated. In effect, the plant that generated the fruit
has made a difference in the world; what it started will continue on. Making a difference in this world, for the
better from our good fruits, is a good thing.
Parents are a good example of that.
The second thing good fruit is for is eating. It is taken by someone and eaten, to give
that person sustenance, to help him grow.
Now the person eating the fruit won’t grow into the plant that produced
the fruit --- I eat oranges but I will not turn into an orange tree --- but,
oranges do have some influence on my life, if only to enable it to continue on.
The key point I noticed about the two benefits of the good
fruit was that: That is not my initial perception of the benefits of MY good
fruit. I wrote that I was thinking that “I
was hearing His words, taking it to heart, and doing good things --- bearing
fruit.” My initial perception was that
my bearing good fruit was a benefit to me, but that’s not the two benefits of
good fruit I subsequently described: My
good fruits are directly to benefit others, not me! God’s telling us to do good things for others,
not to selfishly do them to benefit ourselves.
And in The Better Part’s final prayer I read these words
(and took them to heart):
Jesus, you compare my soul to a garden.
Your word has taken root there, but that
doesn’t mean that I can coast along.
Gardens need tending … Jesus, help me to know myself better. Show me what is choking your grace. Give me the strength to root it out … I want
to bear fruit that will last.
Never let me give up on the souls you have entrusted to my care. Reach out through me to save many souls.
Amen!
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Henri Nouwen’s The Genesee Diary is about the time he spent
living with monks, and learning from them.
He wrote:
“When people are kind and friendly
toward me, I feel happy because I think that they are
attracted to me. (But I noticed) the
monk who is nice and good to me proves to be just as nice
and good to everyone else. (So) I am
obviously not more or less attractive than others. I tended to react by thinking: ‘Well, if he
is just as friendly to everyone else as he is me, his friendliness cannot be
real. His is friendly because he is
supposed to be friendly. His love is
only the result of obedience. It is not
natural. Underneath his friendly surface he probably couldn’t care less about
me as an individual.
There was something very important
I was missing. I knew it simply because
the story I told myself was not true.
The monks who show me love, show love to me not as an abstraction but as
a real individual with his own strengths and weaknesses. The love they show me is based on the real
me. So, although their love for me is
not exclusive, particular, or unique, it is certainly not general, abstract,
impersonal, or just an act of obedience to the rule.
It is important for me to realize
how limited, imperfect, and weak my understanding of love has been. My idea of love proves to be (1) exclusive: ‘You
only love me truly if you love others less;’ and (2) possessive: ‘If you really
love me, I want you to pay special attention to me;’ and (3) manipulative: ‘When
you love me, you will do extra things for me.’
And my ideas of love lead to (4) vanity: “You must see something very
special in me,’ to (5) jealously: ‘Why are you now suddenly so interested in
someone else and not in me?’ and to (6) anger: ‘I am going to let you know that
you have let me down and rejected me.’
But …
Love is always patient and kind; it is never jealous; love is never boastful or
conceited; it is never rude or selfish; it does not take offense, and is not
resentful. – 1Cor 13:4-5
It is this understanding of love
that I must slowly learn. (Earlier in
this book, Nouwen had noted how the monks live under the Rules of Benedict, to
put rigid order into their lives so that they could not be concerned with
earthly distractions --- the rules cover everything they do --- but can focus,
undistractedly, on God. ‘We are called
to a radical break away from ourselves and a total surrender to God.’ With that
in mind, he continues here:) I am beginning to experience that an
unconditional, total love of God makes a very articulate, alert, and attentive
love for the neighbor possible. What I
often call ‘love of neighbor too often proves to be a tentative, partial, or
momentary attraction, … but when love of God is indeed my first concern, a deep
love for my neighbor can grow.’
Thomas Merton commenting on this
says: ‘This is the high point of Bernard’s Christian humanism. It shows that the fulfillment of our destiny
is not merely to be lost in God, … but above all in the fact that we see his
will done in us.’”
What Nouwen has learned is that love for God cannot but be
acted out in love for others, who are made in His image. We love Him, so that we can love others. So,
when God’s grace is in us it flows out in good fruit, causing others to be
uniquely attracted to us, then we, seeing their unique aspect of God’s love,
His loveliness, His fruit, will be attracted to them.
Everyone, from the richest to the poorest, the comeliest to
the ugliest, the meanest to the meekest has some attractive aspect of God
shining out of them, even if it is only through the ugliness, the anger and the
meanness, and the glitzy outer shell that we can see God softly saying: “Please! Love me!”
And if we love God, we will love Him in those we meet, and
be in some way drawn to taste His fruit there.
And (in conclusion) this morning I read these words of a
Psalm-prayer: “Lord, extolled in the heights by angelic powers, you are also
praised by all earth’s creatures, each in its own way. With all the splendor of heavenly worship,
you still delight in such tokens of love as earth can offer. May heaven and earth together acclaim you as
King; may the praise that is sung in heaven resound in the heart of every
creature on earth.”
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Each Sunday morning before mass I light a small vigil candle
before mass and pray: “Lord, let me be a small light to those I meet, not that
they see me, but You, shining through me.”
THAT is great fruit that I seek to share. And perhaps often unsaid (but needed) is
another prayer: “And may I see Your light, shining through them.”
My parish, Christ The King in Ann Arbor Michigan, is about
to start the Alpha Program. Its purpose
is to help people to better see the Light of Jesus, and then themselves to be a
brighter light in this world, His light shining through them, AND so they can then
better see His light in others. In a
way, The Alpha Program is like what Nouwen did, a getting away from the distractions
of the world for a while so that he could focus on what love of God, and of
neighbor, really means for him. Alpha is
ten nights; Nouwen dropped everything and spent 7 months with the monks. He knew he was missing something important in
his life, and it was important he find it.
Loving God, loving neighbor, bearing fruit. It takes some focused time to really, REALLY
understand something that makes all the difference in the world --- and in the
next.
