Bearing Fruit through Faithfully Counting Stars You Can’t See, 12th Wednesday (I), June 23, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Wednesday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
June 23, 2021
Gen 15:1-12.17-18, Ps 105, Mt 7:15-20

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Jesus continues to bring to a conclusion the 16-course Sermon on the Mount we have been pondering for two-and-a-half weeks. He uses two images here. First, he discusses false prophets who wear the sheepskin garments of prophets but inside are far from God and who teach something opposed to his teaching. False prophets can be laxist or rigorist, pretending the faith is too easy or not merciful enough. They can, like the Scribes and the Pharisees, make it too much about external deeds, or, like the Sadducees, too little about external deeds, both of which separate faith from life. Jesus says instead we need to focus on a good tree bearing good fruit. We become a good tree by uniting ourselves to Christ as branches to the Vine, because, as he tells us in the alleluia verse taken from his discourse on the Vine and the Branches, if we remain in him and he in us we will bear good fruit.
• Becoming a good tree begins with a faithful response to God. We see that in Abram’s response to God in today’s first reading. He was faithful enough to leave home and go to a place the Lord would show. But after a decade his faith was being tested by doubts as to whether he would become a father at all. God took him outside and told him to look to the sky and count the stars … and later the “sun was about to set” (v. 12), meaning that he was looking to the heavens during day light. He obviously couldn’t count the stars but he knew they were there. God was asking him to have faith that his descendants were similarly there like the stars. Abraham asked for more in what was clearly a dark night of faith, when a “deep, terrifying darkness enveloped him.” The Lord gave him that confirmation with the miraculous smoking fire pot and flaming torch in the midst of the sacrifice Abram had made.
• For us to bear fruit in the Christian life, we need to trust in God’s words like Abraham, to count the stars we can’t see with physical eyes, to anticipate the fulfillment of the promises of what Jesus says throughout the Sermon on the Mount and beyond. We need to believe in the fulfillment of each of the beatitudes, that our poverty in spirit, meekness, purity of heart, peacemaking, etc., will lead us to what Jesus promises. We need to believe that we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. We need to believe in his promises of God’s providence. We need to believe enough to love our enemies, pray for persecutors, do good to those who do evil, to turn the other cheek, give our cloak and walk the second mile. We need to take out the plank from our eyes. We need to serve God rather than mammon and store up treasure in heaven, knowing that God will provide for us like he does the lilies and sparrows and did for Abraham. We need in short to build our whole life on the rock of Jesus’ word.
• We have the chance to do that at every Mass, in which we receive the downpayment on eternity. Together with Jesus, we look with the eyes of faith at the world and see a field ripe for harvest.

The readings for today’s Mass were: