A few years ago my siblings and I planted some fruit trees at my parents house. We grew up on a small 10 acre farm, so we have plenty of room for fruit trees, and we planted three apple trees.
They were all about this high about seven years ago, pretty thin and weak, so we had to help them out, we pounded three fence posts into the ground around each one, and tied ropes to them to hold them, more or less, upright, at least to prevent them from falling over in the wind.
Then we watered them like crazy that summer. They produced very little fruit. Then winter came, and the deer took care of eating the fruit from the low hanging branches, and eating the leaves, and even eating the lower branches themselves!
Eventually when we realized the deer were eating the actual trees, we built little pens around each of them, just wire paneling to try to protect them from the deer.
Anyway, those little trees were a lot of work, and they were tested like crazy. We cared for them as much as we could, and now, seven years later, mom is finally getting enough apples to cook with. Getting good fruit takes a lot of time and a lot of care, without ever knowing when it will happen.
Today’s first reading and gospel talk about the fruit of the tree and says what is produced comes from how it is cared for, which is an analogy for our own lives.
Jesus teaches that, “A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good, but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil; for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.” This begs the question: What are we filling our hearts with?
As Christians we’re blessed to have been made into a temple of the Holy Spirit through baptism. We’re blessed to have the opportunity to receive the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus into our very bodies in holy Communion. We’ve been filled with the Holy Spirit to guide us. Every single day we have the opportunity to live either in these realities of our faith, or to live focused only on ourselves, focused on the things of the world.
When we fill our hearts and our minds with things of God, we can better withstand the tests of the world. The readings talk about how the tree is tested as an analogy for how we are to produce fruit and how oftentimes we are tested through our speech.
Think of how we react when we are tested, when we get angry and upset. Do we swear or take the Lord’s name in vain? Do we cuss someone out and later regret our words?
Most of the time we’re very much in control of what we do and say, and even what we think. But there may be times throughout the day when we think, “Wow, that word just slipped out … That was definitely an overreaction … Where did that come from?” Those are the moments that we should pause to reflect on what’s going on in our hearts and minds. Those words and actions did not come out of nowhere, they are an overflow of what we’ve been feeding ourselves with – they are the fruit of our mind and the produce of our heart.
When we get stress tested in life, often our speech gives us away. It’s easy to say good things when everything is going fine, but when things get difficult, that’s when we say bad things, when our anger or frustration gets the best of us. However, the stresses and tests in our life can be a good thing because they help us to grow.
God wants our hearts to be pure. He wants us to root out these evil thoughts, to bring them to the surface, He wants us to purify our hearts. When we are getting tested in a stressful situation, it’s like the potter testing us in the fire, making us better. It’s like the tree that sways and bends in the wind.
The tree bends, but it doesn’t break, and it is precisely because it has been pushed around by the wind, and pulled down by the deer that it recovers to be stronger.
When we are young, we need extra care, some guide ropes to support us, some pens to protect us from dangers on the outside. But at some point we lose those guide ropes and pens and we get tested more, and that helps us to stand on our own and produce good fruit.
Our model for being tested is Jesus. Whenever people are testing us we can think of how Jesus handled his suffering at the hands of men too, and we can allow that to draw us closer to Him. But we can also look to Jesus on how to test ourselves.
Next weekend we will hear how Jesus went out into the desert and was tested for forty days in the desert, and similarly, we begin our forty days of testing on Ash Wednesday. Lent is a great opportunity for us. I don’t know about you, but I would rather test myself than to be tested by somebody else.
Today and in the next few days, I encourage you to consider how you need to be purified, how your heart needs to be cleansed so that only good speech will come out, and then think of a penance or an activity you can do this Lent that will help you to achieve that, to fill your heart and soul with the good things of God, in order that you can bear good fruit.
We know we are called to bear good fruit. Scripture says that the trees that do not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. God wants us all to bear fruit, He gives us support and guidance through the church, but He can only protect us so much.
Sometimes other people test us through their sinfulness, but also the Church gives us Lent to test ourselves, to see if our own fruit tastes any good before God evaluates it at the harvest. If it isn’t ready, what can we fill our hearts with to help us to grow closer to God?
Whatever the test is, I hope we can see it as an opportunity to grow to be stronger, and to draw closer to Jesus who was tested and suffered for our sake. God gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ, but it doesn’t mean it will be without work, perseverance, and the occasional test.
May God the Father who cares for us bless us with the grace to see our stress tests as opportunities, while convicting our hearts and enlightening our minds to know how we can fill our hearts and minds with the word of God this Lent in order to produce good fruit in the future.