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Homily for Sunday 23rd May 2021

Last Thursday, at our School Mass for Pentecost,

I showed this apple to the children

and asked whether it might perhaps have come from a pear tree.

Worryingly, there were a few of the younger children who thought that might have been a possibility.

I suggested to the teachers that a botany lesson might be the first order of the day when they returned to the classroom.

My point of course was that if you have an apple you know that somewhere there must be an apple tree:

the fruit tells you where it came from.

As says in Matthew’s Gospel: ‘By their fruits you shall know them.’

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And I think that’s a very appropriate message on this Pentecost Day

as we celebrate ourselves as a people on whom the is poured out.

Because the only way we can see the Holy Spirit

is through the fruits that the Spirit causes to grow in us.

Pears don’t grow on apple trees.

An apple tells you that there’s an apple tree somewhere about.

And the presence, or absence, of the fruits of the Holy Spirit tell you whether the Holy Spirit does, or does not, get a foothold in our life.

In one of this finest passages, St Paul, in his letter to the Galatians

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waxes lyrical on what those fruits are, those signs that a person is allowing the Spirit to flourish in their heart.

They’re immensely concrete and practical:

joy goodness faithfulness gentleness and self-control.

These are the apples that tell you there’s an apple tree somewhere about,

the very concrete signs that we’ve opened our heart enough to give up the driver’s seat and let the Spirit be the one who runs our life.

Disturbingly St Paul complements that list with another one, the ‘anti-fruits’ as it were,

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the signs that we block the Spirit in favour of following our instincts: once again a very practical list with which can all sadly identify at times and including:

feuds jealousy bad temper quarrels factions envy

Paul certainly understood human nature!

If we look at those two lists the first is typified by an attitude of heart that looks outwards, beyond the self, towards others.

Whereas the other list reflects a heart that looks inwards, full of oneself, full of the ego.

Today we bring the fifty beautiful days of the Easter Season to their conclusion and we do it by these decorations that say that the life of Jesus we share

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a fire which consumes those negative behaviours that can so affect our relationships with our fellow human beings,

a fire which fills us with a passion for those fruits of the Spirit that make our lives a light of peace and hope for the world around us, that make our world better.

Apples fall from apple trees.

The fruit is a sign of where it comes from:

the fruits of the Spirit flourish in a heart that’s open to being filled with the Spirit, not full of itself.

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Galatians 5, verse 22: we could do well to ponder at the end of each day those signposts which St Paul gives us,

signposts as to whether life is lived only on our own terms,

according to our own instincts,

with ourselves as the principal beneficiaries.

or whether our lives are open to be being driven by the Holy Spirit, not our own ego;

which means a life facing outwards for the good of the world around us.

That’s the great fruit of the Holy Spirit.

Fr Colin