“My Father has been glorified in your bearing much fruit and becoming My disciples.” —John 15:8

It’s late tonight and I’m tired. In my prayer for this teaching, I’m telling God I want sleep now rather than asking for fruitful words to write so He can be glorified (Jn 15:8). I don’t want to hear about being pruned (Jn 15:2). Does this sound familiar?

The battle over bearing fruit really shows who is lord of our lives, Jesus or us. We can bear any fruit God requires of us, because the energy required to produce the fruit comes unfailingly from Jesus, the Vine (Jn 15:1). Rooted in Jesus, we “will produce abundantly” (Jn 15:5). So it’s not a lack of energy, but either a lack of trust in His provision or a lack of desire to glorify God by staying rooted in Jesus and bearing His fruit (Jn 15:8).

What fruit don’t we want to produce? Is it having more children, increasing our tithing, fasting more, evangelizing door to door, witnessing to co-workers, giving up possessions, pruning our lifestyle, defending life, or going public with our faith? Are we satisfied with producing only our current quota of fruit? God wants to “increase [our] yield” (Jn 15:2), so He’ll be coming soon with the pruning shears.

Questions such as these pierce our hearts and reveal our desires. Do we desire to be pruned because we want so much for God to reap a greater harvest of faith? Or is it our desire to limit or control God’s pruning and intervention in our lives? With Mary, the expert on bearing fruit (see Lk 1:42), let’s answer God: “Be it done to me as You say” (see Lk 1:38).

Prayer: Father, I trust Your pruning far more than I trust the world’s best surgeon to operate on me. Be glorified through me.

Promise: The church “was making steady progress in the fear of the Lord.” —Acts 9:31

Praise: “When Christ our life appears, then you shall appear with Him in glory” (Col 3:4). Jesus, I trust in You!

Christ is the day

From a sermon by Saint Maximus of Turin, bishop

Christ is risen! He has burst open the gates of hell and let the dead go free; he has renewed the earth through the members of his Church now born again in baptism, and has made it blossom afresh with men brought back to life. His Holy Spirit has unlocked the doors of heaven, which stand wide open to receive those who rise up from the earth. Because of Christ’s resurrection the thief ascends to paradise, the bodies of the blessed enter the holy city, and the dead are restored to the company of the living. There is an upward movement in the whole of creation, each element raising itself to something higher. We see hell restoring its victims to the upper regions, earth sending its buried dead to heaven, and heaven presenting the new arrivals to the Lord. In one and the same movement, our Saviour’s passion raises men from the depths, lifts them up from the earth, and sets them in the heights. Christ is risen. His rising brings life to the dead, forgiveness to sinners, and glory to the saints. And so David the prophet summons all creation to join in celebrating the Easter festival: Rejoice and be glad, he cries, on this day which the Lord has made. The light of Christ is an endless day that knows no night. Christ is this day, says the Apostle; such is the meaning of his words: Night is almost over; day is at hand. He tells us that night is almost over, not that it is about to fall. By this we are meant to understand that the coming of Christ’s light puts Satan’s darkness to flight, leaving no place for any shadow of sin. His everlasting radiance dispels the dark clouds of the past and checks the hidden growth of vice. The Son is that day to whom the day, which is the Father, communicates the mystery of his divinity. He is the day who says through the mouth of Solomon: I have caused an unfailing light to rise in heaven. And as in heaven no night can follow day, so no sin can overshadow the justice of Christ. The celestial day is perpetually bright and shining with brilliant light; clouds can never darken its skies. In the same way, the light of Christ is eternally glowing with luminous radiance and can never be extinguished by the darkness of sin. This is why John the evangelist says: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never been able to overpower it. And so, my brothers, each of us ought surely to rejoice on this holy day. Let no one, conscious of his sinfulness, withdraw from our common celebration, nor let anyone be kept away from our public prayer by the burden of his guilt. Sinner he may indeed be, but he must not despair of pardon on this day which is so highly privileged; for if a thief could receive the grace of paradise, how could a Christian be refused forgiveness?