Bearing Fruit through Life According to the Holy Spirit, 29th Saturday (I), October 26, 2019

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Saturday of the 29th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Votive Mass of Mary, Mother and Teacher of the Spirit
October 26, 2019
Rom 8:1-11, Ps 24, Lk 13:1-9

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Yesterday in the Gospel Jesus instructed us, like meteorologists, to read the signs of the times and prudently to make peace with God and others along the journey of life. Today he begins with what happens if we ignore that warning. He describes two seemingly random disasters — being in the wrong place at the wrong time in the temple when Pilate’s soldiers murdered protestors against a water system he was trying to establish with Temple money, and being within or around a tower in Siloam when it collapsed — to make the point that unless we are actively reading the signs of the times that Christ’s kingdom has come among us and we need to convert to enter it, unless we are making peace with God and others through asking for mercy and sharing it, we, like the victims of these two events, will tragically perish without being ready. These events are not punishments, but things like this happen, and unless we we’re heeding the indications he’s given to us to live each day as if it might be our last, we may be caught unawares.
• Jesus builds on the theme with the parable of the fruitless fig tree. Fig trees normally take three years to mature and if they’re not bearing fruit by the third year, they’re likely never going to do so. Likewise if we’re not bearing fruit in our Christian lives after quite some time in our life — fruit in acts of loving adoration of God, thanksgiving, prayer, fruit, loving service of others, zeal for holiness — then we’re like a barren fig tree and are wasting all God’s graces just like the fig tree was wasting the soil. The parable, however, has often been called the Parable of the Second Chance. The figure who represents Christ asks for the time to cultivate and fertilize the ground so that it may have another shot. That’s what Christ does for us, fertilizing the soil with his blood. But the parable tells us, too, that there will be a time when there will be no time left. There’s a time when after that fertilization, if no fruit is being borne, the tree will be cut down. So there is an urgency. We have no foundation for us to think we have ten, twenty or fifty years to bear fruit. Reading the signs of the times of those who die at our age in life or even younger, now’s the time for us to be focused on bearing fruit in Christ.
• How do we do this? How do we bear this fruit? St. Paul describes it powerfully in today’s first reading. He says it’s through a “life according to the Spirit.” The Holy Spirit seeks to raise us from the dead so that we might bear fruit together with Christ. “If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit that dwells in you,” St. Paul writes. For this to occur, we need to put to death in us life according to the flesh, living according to our instincts and pleasures, giving full reign to the old Adam in us. Life according to the flesh is the life of the barren fig tree. St. Paul describes what the works of the flesh are in his letter to the Galatians: “Now the works of the flesh are obvious: immorality, impurity, licentiousness,  idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions,  occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” But he also describe the “fruit” of life according to the Spirit. He uses the word fruit instead of works because fruit requires two principles, a male and a female principle, indicating for us that the “works” are all our own doing but the “fruit” is our cooperation with what God is doing within us. “In contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness,  gentleness, self-control.” That’s the type of “figs” we should all be bearing together with the help of God within. If we’re living with the Holy Spirit, we’ll never be caught unawares and we’ll always be ready, whenever our time comes.
• Today we celebrate a votive Mass of Mary, Mother and Teacher of the Spirit. She is the one who shows us how to receive and respond docilely to the gift of the Holy Spirit, how to bear abundant fruit in communion with him, how to maintain by his help and through awareness of him a profound sense of the presence of God so that we’re never caught off guard. She was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and the Annunciation and always remained under the Spirit’s shadow. She was the one around whom the first disciples gathered during the anticipation of Pentecost to learn how to receive that gift of the Spirit and lovingly obey. She shows us how to keep our mind on the things of the Spirit, contemplating the Spirit in our hearts. She helps us learn how to long to see God’s face. She’s the one who helps us to go confidently toward death, even if it should happen today, because we know that she, at our insistence, is praying for us now and at the hour of our death. We ask her to help us at this Mass be filled with the Spirit so that we may become one body, one spirit in Christ.

The readings for today’s Mass were: