Reflection
Today is Saturday, September 16th. Saint Paul in Chapter 7 of his Letter to the Romans writes the following” “What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate” and later, “For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who does it, but sin that dwells in me.”
That passage came to me as I read the Gospel for today. In today’s Gospel according to Luke, Jesus speaks about good trees and rotten trees and rotten fruit and good fruit and tells the disciples that “every tree is known by its own fruit.” Jesus ties this analogy of good trees and good fruit and rotten trees and rotten fruit to the fruit that a good person and an evil person bear. Perhaps we are to conclude that there are simply good trees, and good people, and rotten trees and evil people in the world today. However, I think Saint Paul illustrates that it is more complex than that.
I would like to think that people are inherently good, but there is the evil of sin that lies within each of us. Of course, there are contributing factors in an individual’s life that may make it harder to be good and easier to be bad. Those factors may be social-economic, or familial, or related to some other component of one’s life.
That is why the words of Jesus later in today’s Gospel are so enlightening to me, Jesus says, “I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, listens to my words, and acts on them. That one is like a man building a house, who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock.”
Whether we are establishing a strong root system to support a good, healthy tree or we are building a strong foundation to support a sturdy house to combat the sin that lies deep within us and the evil that exists in the world today, we must begin by going to Father, listening to the words spoken by the incarnate Son, and seeking the graces of the Holy Spirit to properly act uponthem.
Maybe, just maybe, if we do that; Maybe, just maybe if we GO, LISTEN, SEEK and ACT, we can do the good we want and avoid the evil we do not want.
Maybe, just maybe, if we do that, we can all be good trees bearing good fruit.