Next week we begin the season of Lent with the Ashes on Ash Wednesday and we begin again our annual journey of repentance and conversion for 2019. We leave the Green of ordinary time behind and we go to the Purple or violet of Lent. In our parishes we will have many opportunities to strengthen our spiritual lives over the 6 weeks of lent as we ponder what our faith really means to us as individuals and as a community of faith.
This Sunday in our Gospel Reading Jesus is coming to the end of what, in Luke, is called the “Sermon on the Plain”. He has instructed his disciples to love their enemies, turn the other cheek, treat others as they would want to be treated, not judge them, etc. Jesus is the wise person teaching his disciples a practical wisdom for their lives as disciples. Jesus says, in summary, a person’s words and actions will reveal their character. The Gospel tells us There is no sound tree that produces rotten fruit, nor again a rotten tree that produces sound fruit. For every tree can be told by its own fruit: people do not pick figs from thorns, nor gather grapes from brambles. A good man draws what is good from the store of goodness in his heart; a bad man draws what is bad from the store of badness. For a man’s words flow out of what fills his heart.’
God’s love is effective, it produces good fruit for the benefit of others. The good we do becomes a way to spread the faith to others. Jesus sends us to be witnesses to the faith we profess to practice what we teach and preach. Jesus words to us in this weekend’s gospel show his concern for the integrity and quality of our lives. We cannot, he says, teach others if we ourselves are not witnesses to what we teach.
There are many people out there who were witnesses to the truth of the gospel who have turned away and betrayed the truth and become rotten fruit. In recent times we have seen the awful truth of abuse of young people in the Church throughout the world being brought into sharp focus with the recent Vatican summit and the dismissal of McCarrick and others from the priesthood we can only hope and pray that we can move forward. For all of us that is what Lent is all about moving forward in a spirit of conversion and prayerful return the spirit of metanoia. During Lent we are provided with many opportunities for spiritual renewal but that will be for the weeks ahead. But for now let us stop and reflect on the good we do for others and how becomes a way to bringing the faith to them where they are. There are so many good things that so many people do and we remember all of them especially those who have been good to us in any way as we go forward with faith in God.
Fullerton T 