By Shiju Joseph csc
Readings: Gen 15: 1-12, 17-18; Mt 7: 15-20
As Christians constantly we are forced to make choices in our daily life. We need to decide which is the best course of action in the given situation, what is to be avoided, and who to trust. A very important part of this daily Christian struggle is discernment.
Wisdom to distinguish between good and bad in what life presents to us is key to a good decision. Jesus today gives us a marker to help us in our life-journey: “you will know them by their fruits.” God knows it is very easy for many people to be deceived by the appearance of others. All too often we make judgements about people, invoke well-entrenched prejudices about them, based on how they come across to us peripherally. Jesus warned about such people several times in his messages.
He urges us today to ignore the appearances, look deeper, and look at the fruits of a person’s life. Not every tree is expected to produce equal fruits. The fruits produced by the trees differ in size, shape, colour, and taste. Not every fruit has to taste sweet in order to be considered good.
Similarly not every tree needs to produce my favourite fruit in order to be considered a good tree. What matters is that the fruit we produce is good, not necessarily identical to others. Even as Jesus asks us to judge others based on the fruits they bear, the other side of the coin reminds us that we will also be judged by the fruits we bear. Forget the others for a moment. Would the others consider my fruits as ‘good’? Forget my color, my caste, my religion, my nationality, my education, etc. Will the Lord find my fruits ‘good’ enough?
By Shiju Joseph csc