Homily for the Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time — Year C

My brother has an app on his phone that will identify the tree he might be standing in front of at any given moment. He just snaps a photo of a leaf, and within seconds the app identifies it. It came in handy when we were visiting an arboretum in the Berkshires last summer.

 

However, in His mini-parable about trees, Our Lord, who never owned a cell phone, says, “…every tree is known by its fruit.” Not a lesson in botany here, He uses the fruit tree as a metaphor for the good fruit that we human beings produce by way of our edifying words and our deeds of kindness. On the other hand, He warns that the evil thoughts that lurk beneath the surface of man’s heart and mind, when brought forward in an unkind word or an evil deed, will not offer figs or grapes to others, but will turn us into brambles or thorny bushes.

 

The Old Testament sage Sirach concurs with the fruit tree analogy, warning that one’s unguarded, careless words might be worth no more than rotten fruit. Then, in today’s Responsorial Psalm the theme is taken up again as we heard that “The just one will flourish like the palm tree, like a Cedar of Lebanon shall he grow,” and further, “They shall bear fruit even in old age, vigorous and sturdy shall they be.”

 

How, then, can we become arborists of the soul, pruning away from our thoughts, words and deeds that which does not please God, nor bear good fruit in the world? A good question as we look to the beginning of Lent, which is now upon us.

 

Saint Paul gives us the key to this question in our Second Reading, speaking of sin as a life-and-death matter. He speaks of clothing ourselves with that which is incorruptible and immortal. By incorruptible, he means God’s holiness; by immortal, he means God’s life, which is  to be understood as Grace. By suggesting that we clothe ourselves with God’s holiness and His Grace, Saint Paul is not saying that we should attempt to adorn ourselves with that holiness and Grace as a mantle over our unholiness. That would be like stepping into the shower fully-clothed: there would be no cleansing of the body beneath that clothing.

 

He is speaking of re-clothing the body, heart and soul from the foundations, meaning to remove the clothing of sin’s corruption, and showering in the grace of the mind and heart of Jesus Christ. He closes with the instruction to “be firm, steadfast, always fully devoted to the work of the Lord,” perhaps beginning by removing the planks in our eyes that keep us from identifying the rotten fruit which is borne out of sinfulness, rather than pointing out other people’s faults. He then continues, “in the Lord your labor is not in vain,” which could point to the labor we are about to begin in our Lenten disciplines.

 

So, it is our hope that through prayer, discipline and good works this Lent, we might produce good fruit for the benefit of our souls, for the good of others, for the upbuilding of the church, and the benefit of humanity.