Merciful Jesus, Help Me Grow and Bear Good Fruit
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We begin Week 3 of our Sunday Lenten Challenge with this opening prayer:
Trust And Believe
Lord,
I believe you want to give me the grace to go deeper in prayer this Lent. Help me to be present to you so that I’ll intimately pray these next 15 minutes with my heart fully open and willing to receive that grace. Please help me open my heart and pray with more intensity. I want to be able to visualize myself with you so I can feel your presence more intimately in my life this Lent. Lord, give me the grace I need as I strive to complete these 6 days of Sunday Lenten meditations. I am choosing to take up my cross and humbly follow you all the way to Calvary and I want to do it with my whole heart.
AMEN.
How He Patiently Tends My Heart
Let’s contemplate the mercy of God this Lent. What does it mean to be given more time, when you’ve borne so little fruit? Have you ever felt like a tree that should have been cut down long ago, yet somehow, mercifully, wasn’t? Let’s meditate on these things in the presence of Christ and offer ourselves to Him in prayer.
Prayer to the Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit,
I believe you are truly here and present to me right now. I desire to be present to you.
Thank you for being so faithful to me, even in my darkest moments. Help me recognize your voice and give me the grace to obey it.
You are faithful to me even when I am not faithful to you. Please do not let me take your covenant of love for granted. Do not let me forget the price Jesus has paid for my soul.
Every time I sin and repent I experience your mercy. Thank you for always loving me. I am grateful to you for sustaining me through every trial in my life. Please give me fortitude and the willingness to love you with my whole heart in thought, word, and deed.
Breathe on me as I spend these next 15 minutes fixated on today’s Mass readings. Holy Spirit, help me pray with humility, honesty, love and affection. I want to grow in virtue and holiness.
Thank you, Holy Spirit, for every consolation, desolation, time of silence, difficult trial, and temptation of the evil one. I understand that you love me and that everything in my life happens by God’s holy will, whether it be divine providence or God’s permissive will due to my sin and negligence.
Please humble me as I walk with Jesus toward Jerusalem. Help me prove my faithfulness and do so with great love in my heart.
AMEN.
Say Nothing Just Take Him In
Spend 1-3 minutes in silence gazing at the Lord with love and gratitude, in a prayer of silent contemplation.
Make a Movie in Your Mind
You crouch low behind a cluster of sun-bleached boulders, careful not to disturb the loose scree beneath your sandals. You have been following this old shepherd for some time now, curious about the small flock he tends alone in this wild, granite country east of Midian. The land here rises in jagged, sunburnt ridges, cut by dry wadis that will flood without warning if rain ever comes. Thin clusters of acacia and thorny wild rose cling stubbornly to the rock wherever a little moisture gathers, and the air smells of dust and dry sage baked all day under a punishing sun.
By evening the heat abruptly disappears. The same ground that scorched your bare feet at midday now leaves you shivering as the mountain air turns sharp and cold. You watch the shepherd lead his sheep further than usual, deeper into a narrow valley you don’t recognize, until an isolated peak rises ahead of him, higher and lonelier than the rest.
You keep low, hidden among the rocks, watching him move toward a solitary bush at the base of the slope. And then you see it. A glorious other-worldly flame appears, bright and steady, wrapped entirely around the branches, and yet the leaves do not blacken, do not curl, do not fall to ash. The shepherd stops. He stares at the fire the way a man stares at something he cannot yet explain…
I Am Who I Am, The God of Mercy
Exodus 3:1-8a,13-15
Meanwhile Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. Leading the flock beyond the wilderness, he came to the mountain of God, Horeb. There the angel of the LORD appeared to him as fire flaming out of a bush. When he looked, although the bush was on fire, it was not being consumed.
So Moses decided, “I must turn aside to look at this remarkable sight. Why does the bush not burn up?”
When the LORD saw that he had turned aside to look, God called out to him from the bush: Moses! Moses!
He answered, “Here I am.”
God said: Do not come near! Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground. I am the God of your father, he continued, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.
Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
But the LORD said: I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry against their taskmasters, so I know well what they are suffering. Therefore I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and lead them up from that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Girgashites, the Hivites and the Jebusites.
“But,” said Moses to God, “if I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what do I tell them?”
God replied to Moses: I am who I am. Then he added: This is what you will tell the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.
God spoke further to Moses: This is what you will say to the Israelites: The LORD, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.
Let us take a moment to reflect on the message in the first reading.
In the Old Testament there are three Biblical encounters with God on a mountain top. Noah, Abraham, and now Moses, all hear the voice of the LORD and respond with obedience, and the LORD gives all three the grace necessary to fulfill their calling. Noah was tested when God asked him to build an ark, which took decades. Noah endured social ridicule but remained faithful, and after the great flood, God made a covenant with him on the Mount Ararat that the whole earth would never be flooded again.
We see each of these figures in the Old Testament act with faithfulness and obedience to the call of God. All three had to take action and remain faithful even when put to the test, and as a result, they received what God had promised them. The LORD also tested Abraham’s faith when he led him on a journey with his son Isaac to the top of Mount Moriah. Abraham thought he had to sacrifice his only son, but God intervened through His angels, and gave Abraham a ram to sacrifice instead.
Now we see God come to Moses on the Mountain of God (Mt. Horeb). It is here that we come to understand God’s holiness, and His loving mercy, as He prepares Moses for his calling to free the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt through the burning bush.
In every instance, God pursues and in every instance, the prophet responds to God’s request with faithfulness and determination to do His will despite the difficulties.
Be Completely Real
Is God pursuing you right now? Do you know what the LORD is calling you to do? Are you able to be faithful to your calling despite the challenges you are facing? What are those challenges? Take a few minutes to dialogue with the Lord about this. Be completely honest with Him. Take a few minutes to listen for His response to what you’ve shared.
Let us continue our mental prayer with today’s Gospel:
Visualize Christ
You catch the sharp scent of sweat and travel-worn wool as bodies ahead of you begin to crowd each other. Ahead, you glimpse Jesus, and you push forward, elbowing gently past shoulders until you’re near enough to see his face. A man near you, breathless, blurts out the news to Jesus, “Pilate’s soldiers struck down Galileans mid-sacrifice, their blood spilling into the temple offerings themselves!” Gasps ripple through the crowd. Someone beside you mutters that surely God was punishing secret sinners.
You feel your own pulse quicken with the same fearful question rising in your chest, but before you can voice it, Jesus turns, and his eyes find yours for just a moment. There’s no harshness in them, no eagerness to condemn. Jesus has a deep, searching tenderness in them, as if he already knows the fear knotting in your stomach and wants to loosen it with his own hands. He rests a steady palm briefly on the shoulder of the man who blurted out this news, quieting the murmurs. His voice, when it comes, is calm, unhurried and gentle, even as the words themselves cut straight to the heart…
The Patient Gardener
Luke 13:1-9
At that time some people who were present there told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices.
He said to them in reply, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were greater sinners than all other Galileans? By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!
Or those eighteen people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem? By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!”
The Parable of the Barren Fig Tree
And he told them this parable:
“There once was a person who had a fig tree planted in his orchard, and when he came in search of fruit on it but found none, he said to the gardener, ‘For three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fig tree but have found none. Cut it down. Why should it exhaust the soil?’
He said to him in reply, ‘Sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; it may bear fruit in the future. If not you can cut it down.’”
Let us meditate on this first part:
Jesus tells us that tragedies that happen to us are not punishments by God for specific sins we’ve committed. Instead, Jesus reminds us that death can come at any time so we need to be ready when it comes.
Jesus says, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were greater sinners…?”
Have you experienced a tragedy in your life? Has it made you feel like you are being punished for something sinful? If so, take a minute to imagine Jesus speaking directly to you, telling you that this tragedy you suffered is not a punishment for your sin.
The Lord is merciful, and kind, and he forgives us easily. Rest in this. But mercy was never meant to make you complacent — it was meant to move you to repentance while there is still time. Paul warns the Corinthians that whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall (1 Cor 10:12), and this is exactly the warning Jesus is giving in his own words here.
His question about the Galileans isn’t really about them at all — it’s about whether you are quietly assuming your own standing is safe, simply because tragedy hasn’t yet found you. Mercy has given you time. It has not given you an excuse to stop examining your heart.
Now we will look at the second part.
Here Jesus tells us a parable about a barren fig tree. In the story the gardener defends the barren fig tree to the owner of the orchard who wants to cut it down because it hasn’t borne any fruit in three years. He pleads with the orchard owner to leave the tree in his care, and he will see to it that the ground around it is cultivated and fertilized so it will bear fruit in the future.
Are You Listening?
Are you like the barren fig tree? Do you see the tender love that Jesus has for us when we are struggling to be what he intends us to be? Can you see how he stays and cultivates your life with graces and blessings to help you bear fruit?
Remember, too, the spiritual rock that followed the Israelites through the desert, the rock that is Christ himself (1 Cor 10:1-4). He did not abandon them in their barren, wandering years, and he does not abandon you in yours. His mercy has kept you alive through every stretch of dryness in your own life, patiently giving you more time to bear the fruit he knows you’re capable of.
Jesus, thank you for your mercy, which has carried me through so many barren seasons I never even noticed I was in. Help me not to rest on that mercy as though it excuses me from changing, but to let it soften my heart toward true repentance. Give me the humility to see myself as you see me, stripped of every excuse and every comfortable illusion. Examine my heart, Lord, and show me plainly what is still lacking in me. Make me contrite where I have grown careless, and make me ready, truly ready, to meet you whenever you come for me. Cultivate the ground of my soul, Lord, and let me finally bear the fruit you have been waiting for. AMEN.