I want to invite you to use your imagination for a second. Close your eyes and imagine that you are in a crowded train station. You look around and don’t see anybody that looks familiar. As a matter of fact, you don’t even remember how you got there or where you are going. The train doors are opening and people are pouring out, each going his or her own way, but nobody looks at you or even pays attention to you. The screens showing the departure times are in a different language that you can’t understand. How do you feel? Disoriented? Confused? Desperate? I wouldn’t blame you!
Now imagine that through the crowd noise you suddenly hear someone calling you by name. You turn around and see your best friend waving from the other side of the station. What do you do? Breathe a sigh of relief? Run over to him or her? Probably both! When you get there, your friend says, “I’m so glad I found you, let’s go home!” OK, you can open your eyes now.
If I had to guess, I would bet the moment of hearing your name and seeing your friend was a pretty good one, right? None of us wants to be stranded in an unfamiliar place with no prospect of finding our way home!
But the truth of the matter is that many of us allow ourselves to be in that very spot, spiritually speaking: far from home thinking that there isn’t a clear path back. But it is in this place that Jesus constantly calls out to us, giving us hope to find our way back home.
Today in the Gospel Jesus speaks challenging, but ultimately hopeful words to people whose hearts are not at home. He uses the image of trees, telling them: “A good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit.” By doing this, Jesus reminds them of their own hearts, challenging them to consider whether their hearts are healthy and full of goodness or diseased and full of rottenness. Just like a tree, a diseased, evil heart is going to bear evil works. Conversely, a healthy, good heart will bear good works. Jesus’ challenge is not just to them but to each of us. Because we all, in different ways, allow our hearts to be drawn away from “home” and thus become sick, become partially diseased.
When we examine our hearts, we can find within them many different desires, but the deepest desire is one that cannot be fully met by anything in this world. Our hearts were made for love, and not just any love, but that love which is God Himself. Our hearts either remain at home in God, or they get drawn into sickness and rottenness away from God. When our hearts are far from home, they become sick and start to produce bad fruit. To a certain extent, all of us have allowed our hearts to become sick. All of us grapple with sin.
And in the midst of that struggle with the darkness within, Jesus calls out to our hearts. He reminds us that our hearts are able to produce good fruit. A diseased tree isn’t doomed, it just needs a person who knows how to heal it! This may involve some painful pruning of diseased branches or even roots, or the removal of a beam from our eye that Jesus speaks of earlier in the Gospel, but the result is worth it! Remember the wise words in the first reading from the book of Sirach: “The fruit of a tree shows the care it has had.”
When Jesus calls us out for harboring evil in our hearts by staying away from the “home” of His grace, He does so not to condemn us, but to invite us home and give us that good medicine our hearts so desperately need! Every diseased heart is capable of being made healthy again!
There is a wonderful painting by Caravaggio that I encourage you to look up called The Calling of Saint Matthew. Caravaggio was a masterful painter who really knew how to use light and shadow in dramatic ways in his paintings. In The Calling of Saint Matthew, Jesus is over to the side of the painting and points to Saint Matthew. St. Matthew, dressed in the common garb of people in Caravaggio’s time, looks a bit bewildered and points to himself as if to say, “Me? Are you serious?” The light in the painting is dramatic and forms a slanting line across the wall leading directly to St. Matthew. Beside Matthew, his fellow tax collectors are consumed with the coins on the table in front of them. They are still mostly in shadow and oblivious to Jesus. There St. Matthew sits, mostly in darkness, but looking towards Jesus, who calls out to him. His face has lit up and is turned toward the light.
This painting captures so well the dramatic nature of the call of Jesus for St. Matthew and for all of us. Jesus knows each of us intimately, he knows the depths of our hearts and what He made us for. He comes to us in the midst of our heart-sickness and brokenness, realizing that we are all too easily drawn away from Him who made us. In the midst of this, He calls out to us. Jesus, the Light of the world, invites us to the difficult but fruitful path of following Him. Only He can fill our hearts with the goodness of His grace and mercy.
This Gospel comes at the perfect time, as we are just on the cusp of entering the season of Lent, a penitential season where God can do some major healing work on our hearts if we are open to Him. I invite you to pray for that openness, to ask the Holy Spirit to help you see yourself as God sees you, as a beloved son or daughter who struggles with the sickness of sin but is capable of healing. When we look at ourselves with the help of grace, we can see where we truly need His help and have the courage to ask Jesus for His healing touch, both in our daily prayer and especially in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Jesus wants to care for us so that by His help, our hearts can stay close to home with Him and produce abundant fruit.
+ Heavenly Father, thank you for the grace you offer our hurting hearts through your Son. Thank You for reminding us that we are never too far to be brought back home to You. Jesus, help us to surrender our hearts to Your grace more and more so that where there is darkness, Your light can shine and bring healing. Holy Spirit, help us to not resist the call of Jesus in our lives, but follow Him and thus bear the fruit we were made to bear! We ask this through Christ, Our Lord. Amen. +