The life of grace and the fruits of love are truly a symbiosis between God and us, as the natural symbiosis between tree and earth. The earth, the water, the fertilizer, our very existence, and even Christ, our fellow wayfarer: all this has God given us. But we are the tree itself, and we must fully exercise all the faculties given to us by divine mercy and goodness, all the while cooperating with the richness of the earth in which we have been planted, wherever a wise Providence has seen fit to place us. If we do not do so, if we do not do our best to thrive and produce fruits of charity, then our useless presence impoverishes the land we occupy parasitically, and this death-in-life will have its consequences.
What a consolation it is to realize that all along we have had at our disposal all we need, for Jesus in the Eucharist we celebrate is, all at once, our earth flowing with milk and honey, our abundant energizing water, our nourishing fertilizer, the chastising hoe that encourages our growth, and the blessed sunlight that infuses vitality into our being. We have only not to hide from his merciful, life-giving action. We have only to make ourselves findable! For, as St John of the Cross assures us, if the soul searches for God, much more does her Beloved search for her.
Photograph by Father Emmanuel. Meditation by Father Simeon.
