The Tale of Two Fruit Plants

 Deacon Kevin Gingras

April 28, 2024

Fifth Sunday of Easter

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/042824.cfm

Acts 9:26-31      Ps 22:26-27, 28, 30, 31-32

1 Jn 3:18-24    Jn 15:1-8

This is the tale of two fruit plants.  In my yard I have an apple tree out back and a blueberry bush out front.  The apple trees I never prune and they are now a bit out of hand - they bear bad fruit or no fruit at this point.  The blueberry bush in the front, however, I prune the dead branches and the ones that bear no fruit each year.  Because I do this we get a good crop of blueberries from it yearly.  Faith and I will pick and eat them right from the bush, you can’t get fresher than that!

Now I know nothing about pruning grape vines but back in biblical times that must have been what people were familiar with as it is so deeply rooted in the Old and New Testaments.  We hear it in Isaiah 5, The Song of The Vineyard.  We hear it in today’s Gospel as well.  We also read of it in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. In Chapter 1108:

In every liturgical action the Holy Spirit is sent in order to bring us into communion with Christ and so to form his Body. The Holy Spirit is like the sap of the Father's vine which bears fruit on its branches. 

I love that analogy.  God the Father sent his only Son into the world for our salvation.  God the Son ascended into Heaven and sent us God the Holy Spirit to give us the sap of the vine of Christ.  The nourishment we need to keep our souls alive!

Now sometimes pruning hurts.  We heard of our friend Paul, also known as Saul in today’s first reading.  He needed a lot of pruning.  Jesus spoke to him in a flash of light knocking him to the ground.  Saul was blind for three days, he didn’t eat or drink at all until Ananias healed him. Even years after his pruning and conversion the Apostles didn’t yet trust him.  Barnabas had to vouch for him.

I guess this brings the homily to us.  What do we need to prune from our lives?  What are the things that take away our sight of Jesus and how can we remove them?  Don’t worry, Jesus will help us to do this pruning, just reach out to Him. How? 

• Pray, and if you can, spend time in adoration with Jesus, and ask him to point out the dead branches in your life that need to be removed.  

• Receive the sacrament of Confession. Tell Him, in Confession, the sins you want to be pruned. Sure, sometimes some of the bad branches will grow back, and when they do go back to Confession again! 

• Receive the Eucharist in a state of grace.  When we receive the Eucharist, Christ turns us into tabernacle.  

If we do these things, along with proclaiming Christ to others Jesus will be more present to us!  In my morning prayer on Saturday  one of the intercessory prayers was:

You are present to all who preach your Gospel, and give power to their words - make us today preachers of your resurrection by our holiness in life.

You may wonder if it will work, will people come back to church because of something I say to them? A few men from the Holy Family Men’s group had sent out those flyers from one of Fr. Matt’s Homilies entitled Why Come To Mass on Sunday. We sent them out to all of you, but you attend church so our hope was you would give them to somebody you know who doesn’t go to Mass. We also sent them to parishioners on our mailing list we hadn’t seen in a while. After the 4:00 PM Mass Saturday a gentleman asked me if I was part of the Men’s ministry and wanted me to thank the men for the flyer. He said it has been 10 years since he has been to Mass and the flyer inspired him to return. Praise God! He told me “The lost sheep has been found’!

Today, upon our dismissal from Mass, our prayer should be that we go forth announcing the Gospel to the world just like St. Paul who was one of the greatest missionaries the Church has ever seen.

Mother Angelica tells us:

The Lord God has no one else but you.  You’d better get off your lead bottoms and go out there and change this pagan world!

For who can lay hands on the LORD’s anointed and remain unpunished?

Deacon Kevin Gingras

Feb 20, 2020

7th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Today's Readings

Today a good topic for our homily is obviously - VENGEANCE!  Or perhaps maybe lack of vengeance.  Mercy and forgiveness, yeah, that’s better. Let's talk about mercy and forgiveness instead.

We begin with David and Saul.  King Saul was very jealous of David for many reasons but the biggest reason we can read in 1 Samuel 18:7:

At the approach of Saul and David, on David’s return after striking down the Philistine, women came out from all the cities of Israel to meet Saul the king, singing and dancing, with tambourines, joyful songs, and stringed instruments. The women played and sang: “Saul has slain his thousands, David his tens of thousands.”

King Saul did not like that song and the bible tells us how Saul knew the kingship wasn’t far from David and he became jealous, insanely jealous.

Long story short, King Saul begins to chase David all over the place and that is what brings us to today’s first reading where David spares Saul’s life.  This wasn’t the first time David spared Saul either.

Saul is asleep and all his soldiers as well, apparently a very deep sleep, and David and Abishai are able to get right up to King Saul.  Here is David’s moment.

Abishai whispered to David: “God has delivered your enemy into your grasp this day. Let me nail him to the ground with one thrust of the spear; I will not need a second thrust!” But David said to Abishai, “Do not harm him, for who can lay hands on the LORD’s anointed and remain unpunished?”

David shows mercy to Saul and refuses to kill the LORD’s anointed.  Probably a smart move as David will soon be king so his mercy over vengeance is good teaching for his followers and to keep King David from being nailed to the ground with a spear!  

But why mercy, why didn’t David exact his vengeance that day?

God designed us.  God knows us.  God; since he designed and knows us, knows what is good for us and what is also not so good for us.  God knows that a vengeful disposition is filled with hate and anger and that is not good for us!

We should just trust God but since we live in a fallen world perhaps you will trust WebMD.

WebMD lists the following health problems related to long-term anger:

• High blood pressure

• Heart problems

• Headaches

• Skin disorders

• Digestive problems

It even states that “unchecked anger also can be linked to crime, abuse, and other violent behavior”.

Ok, so if you don't trust God (whom you should), and you don't trust WebMD then we can look at one more example.

Even Master Yoda from the Star Wars sagas knew this well.  He said:

Fear is the path to the dark side…fear leads to anger…anger leads to hate…hate leads to suffering.

King Saul feared David would take over as King, Saul was angered by the woman’s song.  Saul got angry at David.  Saul hated David.  Saul suffered because of it.

God, however, does not hate or exact vengeance, he justly judges but does not hate.  God can’t hate because God is love!  We are made in his image, we are made not to hate, but to love.

St . Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians: 

Just as we have borne the image of the earthly one, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly one.

Our Baptism removes the earthly one's sin, the original one’s sin - Adam’s sin - and grafts us to the Heavenly one, the Holy One - to Christ as well as His Catholic Church and that can never be undone or taken away.

We must strive to be like God and show mercy and to do that we must also forgive.  It’s not easy for us.  Sometimes the hardest person to forgive can be yourselves! Even though we have been forgiven of Original Sin we live in a fallen world and concupiscence still remains.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.

Concupiscence is the word of the day, not the WORDLE of the day, that can only be 5 letters.  Concupiscence is an inclination towards evil.  It’s what can make some sins, some evils look attractive.

Again, if I may quote Yoda.  Luke Skywalker asks him:

Is the Dark Side stronger?

Yoda replies:

No… no… no. Quicker, easier, more seductive.

Yoda was a pretty good little green theologian in the Star Wars series.  Yoda seemed to have an understanding of concupiscence.

I suppose I should finally quote today’s gospel and there Jesus tells us that we must:

love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.

It’s not easy but it is doable and we have but one person to look to for the perfect example of this, Jesus Christ.

Saint Philip Neri says this very eloquently:

”If a man finds it very hard to forgive injuries, let him look at a Crucifix, and think that Christ shed all His Blood for him, and not only forgave His enemies, but even prayed His Heavenly Father to forgive them also. Let him remember that when he says the Our Father, every day, instead of asking pardon for his sins, he is calling down vengeance on himself.”