April 4, 2025 // Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent // Optional Memorial of Saint Isidore, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s Gospel: Luke 6:43-55 (from optional Readings for Saint Isidore, Bishop and Doctor of the Church)
Reflect on the Word //
The sun was toasty and its shining rays led us to where the ripest fruit was. My son quickly found that using the fruit picker to shake the branches was the fastest way to remove the ripe fruit. We laughed as it toppled over our heads, and it seemed as if it was a joyful welcome from the tree itself.
Recently, our old neighbor’s fruitful and good apricot trees were delivered into the hands of indifferent tenants. Every time we would open the garage door my kids would look across the way and voice their frustration that these new neighbors were not kind to these trees. They remembered the care the previous owners had offered the ground, the elderly man crouching over and watering the roots everyday, using the hose to balance his stance, gazing up in satisfaction at the harmonious work between man and nature.
Seeing the trees droop and the life going out before them, my oldest son and daughter commanded us to do something. One day we saw the new owners walking by and kindly asked if we could pick the fruit off the trees. With the green light we went to work. We took the last of what it would ever grow that summer. The love that had been given, poured out, and received ceased completely.
We hear in the Gospel that, “A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good, but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil; for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45). We can understand the fragility of nature and the work it takes to grow good fruit. This is reflective of our own interior life. When we allow Jesus to scatter the seeds of our prayer we can see God’s abundance in our lives. The opposite is true when we stop praying all together.
Sister, the harvest reaped by God in us is always good. We have a Father Who cares for us like a gardener, Who desires to cultivate the goodness of our souls with the most gentle, loving hands.
Relate to the Lord // What fruit is God the Gardener cultivating in you in this season? What needs pruning?
