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By Their Fruits You Will Know Them Saint Irenaeus, bishop and martyr Matthew 7:15-20 Introductory Prayer: Father, give me the courage to bear witness to your truth and the strength to defeat the power of sin and evil. Grant this through Christ Our Lord. Petition: Jesus, help me to bear good fruit in my daily life. 1. Beware of False Prophets. “Not everything that glitters is gold.” The paths leading to either a selfless or selfish love each promise us happiness, yet only one of them can deliver. Jesus and his Church invite us to enter freely into his life-giving love by dying to ourselves and learning to love the truth about God and the human person. The devil and his allies, on the other hand, tempt us towards an apparent happiness that ultimately alienates the human person from God and even from one’s very self. The forces of evil promise eternal bliss but, in the end, the only lasting thing they can offer are emptiness and death. “The greatest deception, and the deepest source of unhappiness, is the illusion of finding life by excluding God, of finding freedom by excluding moral truths and personal responsibility” (Pope John Paul II, Homily, July 28, 2002). 2. By Their Fruits You Will Know Them. Jesus tells us not to judge the intentions of a person. But he nonetheless reminds us that we must also be discerning about certain persons, groups, activities and milieus. It is true that both human wisdom and Gospel law tell us not to judge others or their attitudes. Equally true, however, that we have to reject unhesitatingly everything that could come between us and God or our faith, of course with due charity and respect. The very first object of this discernment process must be my own life. If I profess to be a Christian, my life must bear the fruit Christ asks of his followers. St Paul reveals some of the fruit we must expect to find in a Christian soul: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). This is not to say that a good person will not lose his temper, be selfish or lack gentleness from time to time. Sin affects each of us. But when the fruits listed by St Paul are consistently found in a person’s life, we may discern that the source of this fruit is good. 3. A Good Tree Cannot Bear Bad Fruit. Christian life is not the ascetic result of superhuman souls. It is rather the fruit that divine grace produces in those who generously let it work and actively cooperate with it. Just as God cannot do something evil, grace cannot produce bad fruit. In the spiritual life, God’s grace is the ultimate source of fruit that is good. Therefore, when we freely cooperate with this grace, the result is always the good fruit of holiness and our transformation into Christ. This was the conclusion reached by the good thief. As he suffered on the cross next to Jesus, he was able to witness from within, so to speak, the patience, love and mercy with which Jesus responded to the hatred and abuse they hurled at him. In this moment of grace he was able to discern that only a truly good man is capable of living such a degree of forgiveness and self-giving. Dialogue with Christ: Dear Lord, you ask from me fruit that is good, fruit that will last. Give me the grace to bear the fruit that you seek from me. My heart is ready; give me your strength. Plant the seed of your goodness in my soul and I will strive to water it with care. Mother Most Pure, make my heart only for Jesus. Resolution: Today I will take 10 minutes to reflect deeply on St Paul’s list of spiritual fruit to determine where I need to focus my growth. |
O God, come to my aid.
O Lord, make haste to help me.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen. Alleluia.
A suitable hymn may be inserted at this point.
| Psalm 107 (108) |
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| Praise of the Lord and a plea for help |
| My heart is ready, O God – my heart is ready. I shall sing and make music. Awake, my glory! Rise up, harp and lyre! We will awaken the dawn. I will proclaim you to the peoples, O Lord, sing of you to the nations: for your kindness is great, it reaches the heavens; great is your faithfulness, high as the clouds. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens; let your glory stretch over the earth. Give deliverance to your beloved, let your right hand bring safety – answer my prayer! God has spoken from his holy place: “I shall triumph, dividing Shechem, measuring off the vale of Succoth. Gilead is mine, mine is Manasseh; Ephraim my helmet, Judah my sceptre. But Moab shall be my wash-basin, on Edom I will place my sandal; I will cry in triumph over the Philistine”. Who shall lead me to the fortified city? Who shall lead me to Edom? Surely you, God – although you rejected us. Will you not come out, O God, with our armies? Give us help in our troubles, for vain is the help of man. With God we shall triumph – he will trample our enemies. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. |
| Canticle | Isaiah 61-62 |
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| The prophet rejoices over the new Jerusalem | |
| I will rejoice with joy in the Lord, and my spirit shall be joyful in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation and wrapped me round with the robe of justice, like a bridegroom decked with a crown, like a bride adorned with her jewels. Just as the earth sends up its shoots, and the garden makes its seeds to sprout, so the Lord God will make justice spring up and praise before all the nations. For Sion’s sake I will not be silent, for the sake of Jerusalem I will not be still until her justice comes forth as brightness, and her salvation is lit up like a torch. And the Gentiles shall see your justice, and all the kings see your glory. You shall be called by a new name, chosen by the mouth of the Lord. You shall be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, a royal diadem in the hand of your God. No longer called “Forsaken”, your land no longer called “Desolate”, you will be called “My pleasure in her”, and your land “The Wedded”; for the Lord has been well pleased with you, and your land will receive its bridegroom. For as a young man takes a virgin to wife, so will your sons take you. and as a husband takes joy in his spouse, so your God will rejoice at you. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. |
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| Psalm 145 (146) |
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| The blessedness of those who hope in the Lord |
| Praise the Lord, my soul. I will praise the Lord all my life, make music to my God as long as I exist. Do not trust in princes to save you, they are only sons of men. One day their breath will leave them, they will return to the ground; on that day perish all their plans. Happy the one whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God, who made heaven and earth and all that is in them, who keeps faith for ever, who gives justice to the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry. The Lord frees prisoners, he gives light to the blind, he raises the fallen. The Lord loves the upright, cares for strangers, sustains orphans and widows; but the wicked he sends astray. The Lord will reign for all ages, your God, O Sion, from generation to generation. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. |
| A short Bible reading and responsory may follow here. |
| Canticle | Benedictus |
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| The Messiah and his forerunner | |
| Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, for he has come to his people and brought about their redemption. He has raised up the sign of salvation in the house of his servant David, as he promised through the mouth of the holy ones, his prophets through the ages: to rescue us from our enemies and all who hate us, to take pity on our fathers, to remember his holy covenant and the oath he swore to Abraham our father, that he would give himself to us, that we could serve him without fear – freed from the hands of our enemies – in uprightness and holiness before him, for all of our days. And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High: for you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare his path, to let his people know their salvation, so that their sins may be forgiven. Through the bottomless mercy of our God, one born on high will visit us to give light to those who walk in darkness, who live in the shadow of death; to lead our feet in the path of peace. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. |
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| Some short prayers may follow here, to offer up the day's work to God. |
| Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. |
| A concluding prayer may follow here. |
| May the Lord bless us and keep us from all harm; and may he lead us to eternal life. |
| A M E N |
If our flesh is not saved, then the Lord has not redeemed us with his blood, the eucharistic chalice does not make us sharers in his blood, and the bread we break does not make us sharers in his body. There can be no blood without veins, flesh and the rest of the human substance, and this the Word of God actually became: it was with his own blood that he redeemed us. As the Apostle says: In him, through his blood, we have been redeemed, our sins have been forgiven.We are his members and we are nourished by creatures, which is his gift to us, for it is he who causes the sun to rise and the rain to fall. He declared that the chalice, which comes from his creation, was his blood, and he makes it the nourishment of our blood. He affirmed that the bread, which comes from his creation, was his body, and he makes it the nourishment of our body. When the chalice we mix and the bread we bake receive the word of God, the eucharistic elements become the body and blood of Christ, by which our bodies live and grow. How then can it be said that flesh belonging to the Lord’s own body and nourished by his body and blood is incapable of receiving God’s gift of eternal life? Saint Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians that we are members of his body, of his flesh and bones. He is not speaking of some spiritual and incorporeal kind of man, for spirits do not have flesh and bones. He is speaking of a real human body composed of flesh, sinews and bones, nourished by the chalice of Christ’s blood and receiving growth from the bread which is his body.
The slip of a vine planted in the ground bears fruit at the proper time. The grain of wheat falls into the ground and decays only to be raised up again and multiplied by the Spirit of God who sustains all things. The Wisdom of God places these things at the service of man and when they receive God’s word they become the eucharist, which is the body and blood of Christ. In the same way our bodies, which have been nourished by the eucharist, will be buried in the earth and will decay, but they will rise again at the appointed time, for the Word of God will raise them up to the glory of God the Father. Then the Father will clothe our mortal nature in immortality and freely endow our corruptible nature with incorruptibility, for God’s power is shown most perfectly in weakness.