VIII Sunday in Ordinary Time
Luke 6, 39-45
I am not an arborist. I don’t know what kind of tree it is that I am looking at until it begins to flower and produce fruit. I know a Jacaranda has beautiful flowers this time of the year, but without the flowers… a jacaranda is just another tree. The same is true of an orange or an apple tree. If I can’t see the fruit of a tree, it is just a tree but once the fruit appears… then I can tell you if it is an apple tree or an orange tree.
Sirach the author of the first reading must not have been an arborist either, at least when it comes to people. He tells us that just as the fruit reveals the kind of tree you are looking at in the same way one’s speech reveals the kind of person that they are. He tells us that just by looking at a person you can’t know what they are like, but once they open their mouth you can get a pretty good idea of the person that they are. A person who says kind and loving things usually is a kind and loving person. Someone who is harsh and judgemental, tends to be a harsh and judegmental person.
Sirach reminds us that our speech reveals the kind of person that we are, what we are like and what we value. Like fruit on a tree, our words can reveal the the kind of person that we are. Jesus, in the Gospel of Luke, also uses the image of the tree but he goes further then just looking at the words that come from one’s mouth. He says, “A good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit.” A good persons produce goodness from the goodness of their being, evil from their store of evil. Our acts flow from the kind of person that we are. For example, we might say, we love the poor, but our actions will bring our words to life.
Living outside of the US I think a great deal about what the actions of my government and what they say about the people of the United States. Just one example: President Trump has proposed a new Gold card that costs 5,000,000 dollars. What does this say? Well one might say that the US values the law. If you pay the right fees and fill out the right forms you can come to the United States. But it also is saying that we only want the rich to come to the US. Which might reveal that we are greedy and not very compassionate country. If the poor mother who is fleeing violence in Haiti is told she can’t come to the US but the Rich Oligarch from Russia is welcome what are we saying to the world? It might be time to change the words on the Statue of Liberty from give me your tired and poor to give me your lazy and rich!
Pope Francis, in his 12 years as Pope and I pray that he has many more years has tried to assert what the Catholic Church is all about. From the very beginning with his choice of the name Francis has asserted that in the Catholic Church the poor are first. This has been obvious most especially in Francis’ concern for the immigrants. It is clear to Francis that the immigrants are the most needy in the world today so he has always spoken in favor of the immigrant community defending their rights. But he has also show actions behind these words in the many charitable works that the church offers to help immigrants. From providing shelters, meals, lawyers and other services. People should be able to see that the Catholic Church supports immigrants by the works that we do.
Our actions reveal who and what we are. It is impossible to separate the actions a person does from the person who does them. Our actions tell others what kind of person we are. “Each of us speaks from our heart's abundance,” Jesus tells the disciples. So the question for us today is, what is in our heart? What kind of person are we? It is not enough to simply go to Church on Sunday and say I am a practicing Catholic, we must be people who live our faith but the words we speak and by the actions we take. by their fruits you shall know them.
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