BEARING FRUIT

In Ezekiel, The imagery put forth is at once beautiful and challenging to our faith. God emphasizes once again that He would take the smallest, most insignificant sprout from a great tree and raise it up to unprecedented heights. This will be placed on a high mountain for Israel. And from it will come fruit. Here we have a vision of Jesus Christ. Israel signifies all of us. We are the birds and the trees. Christ is the greatest of them all and his shadow will cover the entire earth. He will offer comfort, solace, and instruction. 

Through our own Salvation Story we recognize this. With Jesus Christ, all is opposite. The large tree dies. A small tree becomes much stronger. The weak are lifted up. All people are important.

   When we read Sacred Scripture, we must realize that everything leads to Jesus Christ. Our confidence is build with Jesus Christ at the top of mountain. It is the desire of God to make this so. With Jesus Christ, all is opposite. The large tree dies. A small tree becomes much stronger. The weak become strong. All people are important. This is the Christian theme and the road to salvation. Christ calls us in our weakened, sinful state and it is from there that he molds us into a new being. We are a constant work in progress that will never be complete until that fateful day when we are finally taken from this earth and are completely renewed in Jesus Christ.

When we find Christ and respond to his call for us to love him, it is a natural reaction to look at everything in a different way. This includes judging our own actions and the actions of others through a paradigm of expectation that, in the end, no one can ever live up to. We are corrupt by our very nature and struggle with our humanity every day. This struggle is not unique with each individual but it is a shared struggle with successes and failures which will encompass our entire lives. The failures must be recognized as much as the successes but with the intent to improve on them and shape them into perfection; a perfection that will not be achieved in this lifetime. It is about the journey and where we are going. From failures come wisdom and understanding that cannot be achieved any other way. We all must look towards the mountaintop for guidance because that is why it is there. If we were perfect or had that capability to make ourselves perfect then there would be no need to look to the epoch of our faith for guidance. We are not Christ and we are far from Christ-like even though there might be those who think differently. They are called hypocrites.

When we see the light on the mountain, we want to climb it. As Christians, we want to go with the Lord. It is a battle between body and soul. He is our father. Our hearts belong to Him. It is our reality.  Our soul longs to be one with our creator as Paul mentions in the reading today: 

“Yet we are courageous,
and we would rather leave the body and go home to the Lord.
Therefore, we aspire to please him,
whether we are at home or away.”

Yet we are here amidst His creation. We are asked to enjoy it in all of its wonder and beauty but with the realization that there is more to our existence than this life alone. If we don’t, we risk the danger becoming lost while trying to climb the mountain. This must be our constant theme and constant understanding of our faith.

When we remain diligent we can find ourselves becoming stronger in our own formation. Through prayer and an active faith-life we are capable of bearing our own fruit; providing shelter and nourishment for those around us. We become exemplars of Christ; providing solace, comfort, and instruction for others who are climbing that mountain beside us. Together we achieve insurmountable greatness through our Creator and Lord.