25 June 2014 - soil quality

25 June 2014 - soil quality


Just so, every good tree bears good fruit,
and a rotten tree bears bad fruit.

For our own sakes, we need to recognize trees bearing bad fruit.  There is real danger from false prophets in our world.  They claim to mean well.  They claim to be serving the common good.  Yet really they are ravenous wolves.  If we try use their teachings to find joy we find thorn bushes and thistles, not grapes or figs. 

It is entirely possible to hear lofty ideas and be unable to fully appreciate the destructive consequences those ideas can have.  It is all too easy to buy into projects to build earthly kingdoms, earthly happiness, and houses on sand.  We are admonished today to avoid abstraction.  Do such ideas produce more selfless love?  Do they lead to more praise to God?  Or do they, while purporting to be self-improvement, produce individualism, isolation, and selfishness?  Do they lead to greater virtue or do they excuse ever more vice?

We need the LORD to teach us the way of his decrees.  On our own we allow ourselves to be confused as to what constitutes true goodness.  We make excuses.  We compromise.  Let us rediscover the book of the law so that we can understand clearly what is goodness and its fruit, and what is evil and its fruit.  This is why he teaches us, after all.  He simply doesn't want us pricking our hands on thorns and thistles when we need not do so.

He had the entire contents of the book of the covenant
that had been found in the temple of the LORD, read out to them.
Standing by the column, the king made a covenant before the LORD
that they would follow him
and observe his ordinances, statutes and decrees
with their whole hearts and souls,
thus reviving the terms of the covenant
which were written in this book.

If we become too committed to a path of vice we eventually find the thorns and thistles growing from us.  In his mercy God will wait patiently to give us a chance to bear fruit (cf. Luk. 13:8).  But the thistle and thorn will eventually be burned.  If they are external to us they are burned in purgatory.  But if our identity is in more in the thorns and the thistles than in the vine of whom we our the branches, if we refuse his mercy, woe to us.

“Go, consult the LORD for me, for the people, for all Judah,
about the stipulations of this book that has been found,
for the anger of the LORD has been set furiously ablaze against us,
because our fathers did not obey the stipulations of this book,
nor fulfill our written obligations.”

He is clear what this blazing anger entails.

Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down
and thrown into the fire.
So by their fruits you will know them.”

To bear good fruit Jesus tells us we need good soil (cf. Mat. 13:8).  We need to give his word room to grow and take root.  When we do we need not fear false prophets or false promises.

Incline my heart to your decrees
and not to gain.
Turn away my eyes from seeing what is vain:
by your way give me life.
Behold, I long for your precepts;
in your justice give me life.