Assessing your fruit

     Part of the Ignatian spirituality is the Examen ( Eggs-A-men ). It's a self assessment about your daily life. If you followed Ignatian Spirituality it's something you would be doing at least once a day. From today's scripture passage it's a self reflection on the status of your fruit. 

      No matter what your personal beliefs, religion or philosophy, I think we can all ask ourselves what kind of fruit do we each bear and of what quality? If you think about what you believe and who you think you are ( "I'm a good person" ).  That's all well and good to say to others or even ourselves but the proof , as they say, is in the pudding. The proof really is whether or not our actions and lives are consistent with what we claim to believe in.

       I am stupefied and mortified at what the so called Christian right is doing in politics and elsewhere that is completely contrary to what Jesus taught, lived and is set down in  scripture. They claim to be apple trees and are growing rotten kumquats. "Pro life" but vote against a whole range of  efforts to assist humans in need from immigrants, to people in poverty, to elderly to simply normal people trying to care for their families. Their litmus test for being 'right' is anti-abortion which in case you don't get it makes you pro-birth and absolutely not pro-life.

         That of course is a whole political assessment. I am more concerned with my own personal evaluation and what kind of fruit am I bearing.  When we look ourselves daily as in the Examen or just for a periodic review, what kind of fruit do we bear and what is the quality of that fruit? Your decision to make. But please don't tell me you have good fruit, the best fruit and that everyone else says so. I think I'll barf.

Matthew 12:33-37

‘Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad, and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers! How can you speak good things, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person brings good things out of a good treasure, and the evil person brings evil things out of an evil treasure. I tell you, on the day of judgement you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter; for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.’