By Father Rich Tomkosky
How can each one of us in our life become the seed, in the good soil, in which God’s Word bears 100, 60, or 30 fold spiritual fruit (less than 100 according to the saints = will be completed in Purgatory); rather than the seed in the bad soil in which the Word/Faith dies: because it doesn’t have deep roots, is choked off by greed, riches, and worldly concerns (distractions), or the devil comes and rips it out of a person before it takes root?
The first thing necessary to produce good spiritual fruit is growing in humility of heart and mind which is primarily shown by a life of holy obedience to the Lord (to have a listening as opposed to a stubborn human heart). In a spirit of faith to be more open to the Holy Spirit in our daily life, and more consistently docile as time goes on. To be open to God’s working in our life calls for the spiritual attitude of being aware that God is the One who knows what is best for us rather than ourselves, and to trust Him and the teaching of our Holy Catholic Faith to bring us into communion with God in all of our thoughts, words, and actions.
This is a very important point to always remember: If a conflict comes up between our individual mind/conscience and the clear teaching of the Catholic Church on faith and morals as laid out in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the benefit of the doubt goes to the Church teaching because Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit to lead His Church into all Truth — now for over 2000 years; Jesus did not promise that to our individual fallible hearts and minds.
To trust God is speaking through our Catholic faith, and then to act on that trust is a great spiritual gift. If we trust God instead of our own limited human resources, then God’s Word will take root in our heart and mind, and we will bear good fruit in the Lord. He is the vine and we are the branches – not the other way around.
Along with humility of heart and an obedient and open spirit, we are called to be courageous. Courage, or Fortitude, is the gift of the Holy Spirit, received in Baptism and renewed and deepened in Confirmation, which gives us the inner and outer strength to bear the inevitable difficulties that arise from following Jesus and the Gospel way of life.
Saint Paul calls us to that courageous faith when he reminds us, “the sufferings of this present time are nothing compared with the glory to be revealed in us.” We need to remember this reality when we are tempted to be give into human respect and the world’s philosophy of indifference or rebellion against God and His Catholic Church. The ongoing temptation is to just live for the now: immediate gratification which unfortunately is the wide path that leads to Hell; rather than the narrow path of living in the present moment with God which leads someday to Heaven.
Both of the first two conditions of humility of heart and courage in faith will only occur if we cultivate a deeper interior life, which leads to union with the Indwelling Blessed Trinity in our soul. This gift of Divine union is a personal call from the Lord to every human being, no matter our age, which is meant to grow every day of our earthly life.
In order to draw close to the Lord:
1. We must truly accept God’s personal love for us, in a real not in an abstract way.
2. We embrace God’s permissive will in our daily life, especially in the difficult moments.
3. We focus on the daily call to pray and enter into communion with the Indwelling of the Blessed Trinity in our soul by sanctifying grace and by avoiding all mortal sins.
This is the only real path that will produce good spiritual fruit: living in union with the Blessed Trinity deepens through prayer, through uniting our daily duties and our sufferings of life with Jesus in company with Our Lady as she asked us to do at Fatima, and through living a life of charity. This is the path to real spiritual growth and bearing fruit for the Kingdom.
The Saints show us this Truth repeatedly, as they model for us how to live Gospel truth in the concrete circumstances of daily life in every vocation. See Saint Maria Goretti and the recent great book: I Killed Maria Goretti: The Life and Repentance of Alessandro Serenelli – who was her murderer. Get in the habit of reading about their lives, daily, to model their heroic virtues. And may we ask the Saints daily for the gift of their intercession with God, particularly our Blessed Mother Mary the holiest of all the saints, so that we may all produce a harvest of 30, 60, and eventually a 100-fold for the Lord and His Kingdom. God bless you.
Father Rich Tomkosky is the Pastor of Saint Thomas the Apostle Parish in Bedford and the Pastor of Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish in Beans Cove.
