Good Fruit of the Good Tree

Good Fruit of the Good Tree

Take courage…for when God engrafted himself into us barren trees by joining his divine nature with our humanity, he so strengthened our reason and our love for him that we are drawn to love by the power of love. Sensuality has been so weakened that it can do nothing to us if we are willing to make use of reason. It is clear that our flesh in Christ’s humanity, taken from Adam’s stock, has been so whipped and tortured with anguish and derision an insult even to the shameful death of the cross, that it ought to make our own flesh so submissive that it would never resist or defy reason and God.

Oh boundless love, gentlest Jesus! How could anyone not be softened and melted by you? Oh welcome engrafting, incarnate Word, Son of God, you drove out the worm of Adam’s ancient sin. You got rid of its wild fruit—for sin had made our garden so wild that it could produce no life-giving fruit of virtue. Oh sweet fire of love, you so engrafted and bound God into humanity and humanity into God that the sterile fruit that had dealt us death became sound and productive. And so it will always give us life so long as we are willing to make use of the power of reason…

Look at the sweetness of the tender fruit, the spotless Lamb, the seed sown in Mary as in a lovely field!...Our rational will has been made even stronger by God’s union with humanity.

I beg you in Christ gentle Jesus to lift your love, your affection, your desire up high. Take hold of the tree of the most holy cross and let it be planted in the garden of your soul, because this is a tree laden with fruits, the true solid virtues. For you see very well that beyond God’s union with his creature he has joined himself to the most holy cross. And he wills, he insists, that we too join ourselves to this sweet tree in love and desire. Then our garden cannot help producing sweet and tender fruit.

St. Catherine of Siena

Saint Catherine of Siena (1380), Doctor of the Church, was a Dominican, stigmatist, and a papal counselor.