Fruit That Remains
Lynne Elwinger, O.C.D.
Here in Iowa, summer has exploded onto the scene with a flourish of record-challenging heat and lots of rain. Plant life everywhere is growing and flowering and even beginning to bear fruit. A verse of scripture recently heard stays with me through it all: It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you, and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain (Jn 15:16). I have been praying and musing with what it might mean to bear fruit that will remain. Also in my thoughts has been our upcoming patronal feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel on July 16, and what it signifies in terms of blessings given to us.
My explorations for a good definition of the term blessing (in the way I was thinking of it) were disappointing, until by chance I came across a line by Eileen Burke-Sullivan (Creighton U. Theology Department) in a recent Daily Reflection on their website. She said, “To bless is to offer the power of God, life and love – and all that these gifts entail – to others.” That was thrilling to me, as I had been thinking that, perhaps, bearing fruit that remains had to do with living so that our daily lives could be a blessing in the lives of others. My musing on how blessing, in that sense, could be defined, was suddenly given a wonderful frame of reference by her definition.
To Offer God’s Presence To Others
In my mind, a blessing, wished for or bestowed, is a clear intention for the inflow of divine good will and aid into another person’s life or a given situation. It is also a means of investing something such as a medal, water, a gathering, etc., with a special sacramental quality of the holy. To be a blessing then, would be to offer God’s powerful presence to others, a presence of hope, joy and life-giving love, through our own Gospel living. One of our hymns speaks of being the hands of Christ and of scattering joy like seed. Divine riches surround us always, but all too often we fail to notice them. When an act of kindness, a word of encouragement, a helping hand or simply a listening ear are offered by another, the gifts we’ve been overlooking seem to suddenly come to life right in front of us. Reading others’ beautiful thoughts, hearing music that moves my soul, and taking time to be immersed in the beauty of the natural world can also affect me in that same way. All of this seems to be connected with presence – my presence to the giftedness of each situation, or the presence that I could be to another, calling forth the sacred dimension of life hidden in the depths of all that is. We all need each other to help increase and maintain our awareness of the sacred in life and of God’s generosity continually being showered upon us.
To Be A Blessing
To be a blessing, I concluded, could be such a powerful force for change in our troubled world, if we all would consistently work at it. We live in a world hungry for hope, peace, acceptance, affection, optimism, opportunity, joy, love, and basic needs of life. And for each of these desires and needs, God has provided all that we need to fulfill these desires, if we have the eyes to see it. This is fairly easy to miss, though. I know I sometimes fail to see these graces shining through life’s circumstances, or see them only after the fact. John O’Donohue has a wonderful statement about this in his book Beauty (p. 227). “Sometimes the urgency of our hunger blinds us to the fact that we are already at the feast.”
It is so easy to get caught up in the busy routines and demands of each day that we forget to see and to be blessing. I want to work at changing that because I really do want my life to bear fruit that remains. What is that fruit exactly? I’m not sure. But I do see that two verses later in John 15, Jesus gives his disciples the commandment to love one another. I translate that message into a vision of becoming pathways of God’s presence, conduits of caring, places of rest for weary travelers on the road of life. An image comes to mind of bringing light to darkened places and joy to saddened hearts; of lightening a load and brightening a road. Many of us already do this in the course of daily living, without even being aware that we are carrying out a holy task. And this is something anyone can do anywhere. In fact, it may be the primary work to which we as Christians are called. The fruit that remains is the love that never dies – the experience of God’s love made real in our time and place. Like the gardens of an Iowa summer, may we bloom where we are planted and bear much fruit! And may our fruit be fruit that remains.
Sr. Lynne Thérèse Elwinger of the Resurrection O.C.D.