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“‘For three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fig
tree but have found none. So cut it down. Why should it exhaust the
soil?’ He said to him in reply, ‘Sir, leave it for this year also,
and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; it may
bear fruit in the future. If not you can cut it down.’” Luke
13:7–9
How much good fruit is born from your life? This is an important
question to answer honestly. One of the best ways to discern
whether or not we are serving the will of God is to look at the
fruit being born from our lives.
Good fruit is born in various ways and manifests itself in various
forms. However, the fruit you must look for is twofold. First, it
is the fruit found within your own soul resulting from a life of
true prayer and union with God. Second, we must look for the fruit
that is born of charity in our actions toward others.
When you look honestly at your own soul, what do you see? Often,
you may see a sort of war within you in which your disordered
passions and appetites fight against the Spirit of God. Good
spiritual fruit will require interior purification. Through prayer,
fasting, spiritual reading and the like, you must look for ways in
which God’s Spirit takes control of your disordered human nature
and reorders it in accord with His holy will. Though we are all
sinners and will all fall at times, we must work diligently to
overcome every action, desire and temptation that we can
objectively discern to be contrary to the will of God. At times,
your fallen human nature can so forcefully draw you into sin that
it can confuse your intellect and lead you to rationalization of
your sins. But if you want the fruit of God’s presence in your
life, then you must continually choose to make your interior life a
fruitful garden in which the virtues of God grow and are nourished
in abundance. So, again, what do you honestly see as you look into
your own soul?
As God nourishes the virtues within us, and our disordered passions
and appetites fall under the control of the Spirit of God, then we
will also discover a need to allow the interior fruits of God’s
love to flow forth from our lives into the lives of others. We will
begin to desire selfless and sacrificial living. We will begin to
desire to put others first. We will consider others’ lives as
precious and filled with dignity. And we will overcome judgment,
harshness, anger, and the like. We will find ourselves desiring the
good of others and will supernaturally be drawn to do many small
acts of kindness toward all. But it all starts with one’s interior
life which our Lord desires to cultivate and fertilize with His
grace so that the interior fruits of His love will grow within and
ultimately become very manifest in one’s daily exterior actions
toward all.
Reflect, today, upon your soul being like this fig tree that has
not been bearing fruit. See our Lord coming to you and asking you
to allow Him to cultivate the ground and fertilize it. Know that
this requires change on your part. If you are to bear good fruit,
then you need this intervention by our Lord. Work with Him, be
diligent, and do all you can to begin to bear an abundance of good
fruit so that you are not among those who are ultimately cut down
by God’s justice.
My laboring Lord, You never cease to work diligently to
cultivate the soil of my soul so that the seeds of Your mercy will
grow and produce the good fruit You desire to come forth from my
life. Please give me the grace I need to be faithful to a daily
life of prayer, a practice of penance and a search for Your holy
Word. Transform me, dear Lord, and bring forth the good fruit of
Your holy Kingdom in my life. Jesus, I trust in You.
Source of content:
catholic-daily-reflections.com
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Featured image above: The parable of the barren fig tree
by Carl Rahl, via Wikimedia Commons
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