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Chapter 2

Where’s the Fruit?

“By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”

John 15:8

My friend “Bill” works in a Southeastern parish that recently went through yet another pastoral turnover. Bill has been the carrier of the evangelization-and-discipleship flame in his parish for years as pastors come and go. It is common practice in his diocese for members of the priest personnel board to meet with parish leadership to get a better sense of the community before making the decision about which priest to assign as pastor.

The parish’s pastoral team — staff members, finance and pastoral council — prepped for the meeting. To help everyone focus, Bill outlined several specific areas of spiritual fruit that had emerged in their parish. Everyone was encouraged to pick one area and share a story that showed how their parish was moving from maintenance to mission.

As the parish leaders told their stories to the visiting board members, many were in tears. One woman talked about how she had once only felt capable of volunteering to make sandwiches for the homeless. After growing significantly in her relationship with Jesus, she felt called by Jesus to confront the city about opening a homeless shelter.

Another man told the story of some people visiting the parish who felt the Holy Spirit descend on them when they stepped onto the parish grounds. The visitors sensed that God was asking them to move to the parish from another state because of what he desired to do there. Others talked about how they were no longer afraid to have spiritual conversations with family members and strangers. Many talked about how the community needed to go out of the parish and learn how to better proclaim Jesus.

One person reported hearing from Protestant friends who said, “They have their eye on us.” Another individual shared how she had left the Church and was hurt and upset with the Church. She attended Mass at the parish and was welcomed in an extraordinary way. As a result, she underwent a conversion, was discipled in the parish, and is now a staff member.

The stories went on and on. One of the visiting board members openly wept and said that she felt like she had just been on a retreat experience. Bill told me afterward that he did not have to say a single word.

Toward A Culture of Discipleship

Bill’s story shows the remarkable changes that a parish and its people can experience when there are many disciples, and as a result, the culture of the whole parish changes. Significant fruit, even amazing fruit, is borne. People can’t help but recognize the change.

I couldn’t hide my own surprise a few years ago in front of the leaders of a parish in another part of the county who were also experiencing an extraordinary amount of fruit. I had to tell them: “You do realize this is not normal, right? We have worked in hundreds of parishes and this is not normal.”

Their response was perfect: “It’s normal here.”

A Little Theology of Fruit-Bearing

When embarking on a journey, it is extremely useful to consult a map in advance. Think of this chapter as a very brief introduction, a Catholic map of fruit-bearing.

Theology is the exploration of God’s self-revelation, without which we could not know God. But what the Church calls God’s “economy” refers “to all the works by which God reveals himself and communicates his life” to humanity in time and space (CCC 236). God’s economy is about subjective, or applied, redemption — that is, how God’s grace pours into our world and changes our individual lives, families, neighborhoods, parish communities, and whole cities. In the economy of God, when we walk obediently with Jesus as his disciple in the midst of his Church, you and I gradually become God’s “handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared” (Ephesians 2:10) and through which he reveals himself and communicates his life to the world. We become fruit.

In John 15, “fruit” (Greek: karpos) as a metaphor refers to a “deed, action, result, profit, or gain.”¹ In other words, it is something real and concrete that most ordinary people can recognize as good or bad. The word “fruit” in Catholic Tradition is used to refer to a spectrum of related but different things:

1. The interior spiritual consolations that a person may experience as he or she follows Jesus as a disciple.

2. Fruits of the Spirit. Catholic Tradition follows the Vulgate (St. Jerome’s Latin translation of the Bible) in listing twelve fruits: attributes or characteristics of the Christian life: charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, chastity.²

3. All personal internal and external acts of obedience and cooperation with grace.

4. What God accomplishes or offers others through our acts of obedience (the fruit of our fruit, so to speak).

(It is important to note that the impact of God’s provision made available to others through our acts of obedience depends also upon the spiritual openness of the one receiving it and that person’s response. The recipient has to choose to cooperate with the grace received through your obedience.

So, for instance, if a Christian author obeys the Holy Spirit’s prompting and writes a book urging people to help the homeless, that book is a fruit of her obedience. But, for her obedience through that book to fully bear fruit, somebody else has to read it and respond to the call of the Holy Spirit by actually taking action to help the homeless. The fruit of another’s response to the graces channeled through our “yes” can affect many lives. The fruit of the fruit of our fruit cascades out and touches many, including people we will never know.)

5. The person that you and I become through this lifelong process of cooperating with God’s love and grace is also fruit; the “everlasting splendor” that C. S. Lewis spoke of in The Weight of Glory.³

The accumulated impact of our acts of obedience is largely unknowable by us in this lifetime. Any apparent fruit that is visible to us or to others is only a small glimpse of the infinitely larger network of grace that encompasses all of time and space and is known only to God. We will begin to understand the mystery of grace only when we stand before him.

I got a glimpse of the “fruit of the fruit of my fruit” a few years ago, when I received a letter from a woman I had never met. “Emily” wrote that she had driven hundreds of miles to attend a Called & Gifted workshop put on by a small team in another state. As a result of the workshop, she said that she was in the midst of missionary training and would soon be sent to Africa to train medical personnel to receive and distribute AIDS medication. Emily turned out to be a recently retired pharmacist with an epidemiology background who had not known what to do next. She had never imagined becoming a medical missionary — until she went through the gifts-discernment process and realized that she might have been given a charism of Missionary. Emily wrote to thank me for the discernment process that changed the course of her life.

I was especially moved when I considered what God might do through her obedience. Emily’s part in making AIDS medication available throughout a small African country could save the lives of an entire generation and change the course of the whole nation. A few days later, I attended a parish gathering during which I had the chance to share Emily’s story. A woman across the table from me became very excited. She exclaimed, “Emily’s like Esther in the Bible! Who knows but that she was brought into the world for such a time as this?”

Of course! But aren’t we all?

The Vine and the Branches

Scripture describes the Church as both the Father’s cultivated field and as the vineyard in which Jesus is the “True Vine.” The Holy Spirit is the sap that runs between the Vine and branches.

In our Tradition, the imagery of fruit-bearing is used of both the Church and the Gospel. The Church is called the “Vine” because she is the mystical Body of Christ who shares in the life of her Head,⁴ while St. Paul writes of the Gospel “bearing fruit and growing” (Colossians 1:6). The life-changing power of Jesus the True Vine is communicated through his Great Story to those who are not yet disciples and to those who are. Speaking the name of Jesus has great spiritual power:

But the one name that contains everything is the one that the Son of God received in his incarnation: Jesus…. The name “Jesus” contains all: God and man and the whole economy of creation and salvation. To pray “Jesus” is to invoke him and to call him within us. His name is the only one that contains the presence it signifies. Jesus is the Risen One, and whoever invokes the name of Jesus is welcoming the Son of God who loved him and who gave himself up for him. (CCC 2666)

Jesus’ name actually contains his presence and whoever invokes Jesus’ name is welcoming him. Which is why naming Jesus with love and telling his story bears fruit. (And why it is sinful to take Jesus’ name in vain.)

The Vine and the Graft

You and I are not natural branches of the Vine. Rather, we are foreign branches grafted onto the Vine (see CCC 1988). What is fascinating about this image is that, in nature, the branch grafted on — not the rootstock vine — determines if and what quality of fruit is borne.

For instance, if I plant a white rose — perhaps a Pope John Paul II hybrid tea rose, which, by the way, has a gorgeous aroma — that has been grafted onto the rootstock of a red rose (as is true of most American roses), it will bear only white roses. But if my beautiful JPII graft on the upper part of the rose is killed by a Colorado blizzard, I will never see another white rose. The surviving root stock buried in the earth will be doing all the fruit-bearing from now on, and it is going to be red!

But in the Kingdom, it doesn’t work that way. In John 15, the Vine changes the spiritual DNA of the graft so that the naturally fruitless graft can bear fruit. In the heavenly Vineyard, the branch does not determine the quality of the fruit, the Vine does. Bearing good fruit is the evidence that the nature of the grafted branch has been fundamentally transformed by its union with the Vine. In short, we only bear fruit if we are transformed by our union with Christ. We only bear fruit if we are living as disciples.

The Wild Olive and Root of Israel

Another powerful image from Scripture is that of Gentile Christians being “wild olive” branches grafted on to the root stock of Israel in baptism (see Romans 11:13-24). The fruit of the olive tree was precious in the ancient Mediterranean because olives were the single most important food item, used not only for cooking and healing but also as a cosmetic, as soap, and as the most important source of light.

In the ancient world, branches of cultivated, fruit-bearing olive trees were often grafted onto a rootstock of “wild” olive. The wild olive root would never bear edible fruit itself but would supply the “good,” cultivated branches with nutrients so they could bear fruit. No ancient Greek farmer would graft a wild, non-fruit-bearing branch onto cultivated rootstock because no edible olives would be produced!

But once again, the impossible is possible in the Kingdom. We wild, unproductive Gentile branches do not bring fruitfulness to the tree of Israel. Rather, the tree makes our unfruitful branches fruitful by transforming them with God’s life-giving supernatural power. Our spiritual “DNA” is altered by being grafted into the life of Jesus Christ, the Messiah of Israel.

By this power of the Spirit, God’s children can bear much fruit. He who has grafted us onto the true vine will make us bear “the fruit of the Spirit: … love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” “We live by the Spirit”; the more we renounce ourselves, the more we “walk by the Spirit.” (CCC 736, emphasis added)

If we remain “in Jesus” and Jesus in us — if that graft is being transformed by the DNA of the Vine — we will bear much fruit.

What Fruit Looks Like

There is a whole set of spiritual corollaries that go with this process of transformation through union with the Vine. If we remain in Jesus and his word and Jesus remains in us, then:

• We bear much fruit, fruit that will remain.

• We show that we are disciples.

• We keep his commandments.

• We remain in his love.

• It brings the Father glory.

• Jesus’ joy will be in us.

• Our joy will be complete.

• Our prayers will be answered (see John 15:1-16).

That sounds like a great deal to me. In meditating on this passage, I was especially struck by verse sixteen, which linked bearing fruit to having our prayers answered. Obviously, prayer itself is enormously powerful and can change the course of history. John Wesley famously said that “God does nothing except in answer to believing prayer.”⁵ But I am also sure that one of the reasons that our prayers will be answered is that the fruit you bear will turn out to be the answer to someone else’s prayers!

Faith and Fruit

The root stock of the Vine and the cultivated olive are full of the life and sap of the Holy Spirit. And that life and sap is truly and reliably given to us by the means Jesus bestowed on the Church: the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit given to the baptized, the sacraments, the liturgy, the Scriptures, and many other gifts he has given us in and through his Body. That is why the Catechism says of the liturgy:

A sacramental celebration is a meeting of God’s children with their Father, in Christ and the Holy Spirit; this meeting takes the form of a dialogue, through actions and words. Admittedly, the symbolic actions are already a language, but the Word of God and the response of faith have to accompany and give life to them, so that the seed of the Kingdom can bear its fruit in good soil. (CCC 1153, emphasis added)

Our spiritual openness and eagerness to enter into the obedience of faith is essential. Evangelization, personal faith, and conversion that leads to the lifelong journey of intentional discipleship changes our interior disposition, cultivates our spiritual soil, and makes it rich enough to bear much fruit.

How important is fruit-bearing to the drama of redemption? I was amazed to realize that St. Paul described it as one of the central purposes of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead:

In the same way, my brothers, you also were put to death to the law through the body of Christ so that you might belong to another, to the one who was raised from the dead in order that we might bear fruit for God. (Romans 7:4, emphasis added)

Fruit-bearing is the primary indicator that everything that Christ accomplished for us is actually reaching us, penetrating, and changing us. Bearing fruit is the sign that salvation has come to our house and is actually occurring in our lives.

No wonder Pope St. John Paul II said:

Bearing fruit is an essential demand of life in Christ and life in the Church. The person who does not bear fruit does not remain in communion: “Each branch of mine that bears no fruit, he (my Father) takes away” (Jn 15:2).⁶

That is also why he reminded us:

People are approached in liberty by God who calls everyone to grow, develop and bear fruit. A person cannot put off a response nor cast off personal responsibility in the matter. The solemn words of Jesus refer to this exalted and serious responsibility: “If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned” (Jn 15:6).⁷

Obstacles to Fruit-Bearing

Dogmatic theologian Ludwig Ott summed up the interior dynamic of fruit-bearing this way: “the subjective disposition of the recipient is … the indispensable pre-condition of the communication of grace.”⁸

Infants cannot put obstacles in the way of receiving grace, but older children, teens, and adults certainly can. The obstacles that can block the ultimate fruitfulness of valid sacraments include:

• Lack of personal faith.

• Lack of understanding.

• Lack of a desire to live a new life.

• Lack of repentance.

In his classic book, A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist, Abbot Vonier uses a powerful image to convey how obstacles can block the living impact of graces that we have objectively received:

[It is] a favorite idea of St. Thomas, that faith is truly a contact with Christ…. Without this contact of faith, we are dead unto Christ, the stream of his life passes us by without entering into us, as a rock in the midst of a river remains unaffected by the turbulent rush of waters…. Till the contact of faith be established, the great redemption has not become our redemption; the things of Christ are not ours in any true sense.⁹

Catholic Identity and Fruitfulness

It is important that we understand that what is sometimes called “Catholic identity” is not necessarily an expression of living faith or discipleship. In an ideal world, personal faith and discipleship would always form the center of one’s Catholic identity. But in our generation, many Western people who still hold on to the name “Catholic” are functional agnostics or atheists — even if they occasionally drop by a parish. Catholic identity alone will not produce genuine fruit. Jews who presumed their spiritual status was assured because they were born to Jewish parents were schooled by John the Baptist in no uncertain terms — terms that apply just as much to us:

“Produce good fruits as evidence of your repentance; and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones. Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees. Therefore every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Luke 3:8-9)

Being active in your parish is not a guarantee either. You and I can be very active in our parish as catechists, musicians, members of the RCIA team, or the finance council. We can run capital campaigns, serve as ushers, and help with parish festivals. But all that activity is not necessarily fruit just because it takes place in a religious setting.

Fruit-bearing always emerges out of a growing relationship with God. Bearing spiritual fruit occurs when we act because we are seeking, however haltingly, to say “yes” to God’s love, grace, inspiration, or command. It can be difficult for devoted Catholics to believe that there are people who do not serve in church settings out of a personal faith. I was stunned when I first met active Catholics who told me they had no relationship with God.

For instance, I once attended an invitation-only national evangelization conference where a middle-aged man I didn’t know walked up to me at the first break. He startled me when he said “Until I read your book last month, I did not know it was possible to have a personal relationship with God.” That was not the sort of thing I expected to hear in a gathering like that!

This man was obviously a good guy and a highly committed Catholic. In fact, he was in full-time ministry forming clergy. So I asked him to help me understand why he thought he had not known that he could have a relationship with God. He said he was raised in a faithful, practicing Catholic family, but no one had ever talked about a relationship with God. He just had not known it was possible.

Since Forming Intentional Disciples was published, I have had similar conversations all over the world with bishops, seminary faculty, priests, religious, and lay leaders. They told me that when they were ordained or took final vows or began ministry, they had not been intentional disciples … but they were now. The fun part was hearing the amazing stories of encounter and how following Jesus had transformed their lives and ministries.

In every parish that is beginning to evangelize, the issue of leaders who are not yet disciples naturally emerges — as it should. One friend who is in parish ministry told me that staff members are coming to him acknowledging, “I am not a disciple yet.” What he reported and I have also witnessed is that most Catholics who come to this awareness don’t feel judged or a failure. They are just becoming aware of new spiritual possibilities. They are interested, open, and hungry, but they don’t know what to do.

When this happens, here are some suggestions that my friend and I have found useful:

1. Leave the conversation open-ended so that you can return to it. Offer to meet again if possible.

2. Pray right there and then if the individual is comfortable. I find that helping people to pray out loud and to acknowledge to God that they are open to spiritual and personal change and ready for more is very powerful. You are helping someone cross into the threshold of openness, a transition that can be very difficult.¹⁰ In my experience, God always answers that prayer in a powerful way.

3. If a solid trust exists between the two of you, and you have the time and privacy, consider having a threshold conversation. Threshold conversations are very simple, open-ended spiritual conversations — a kind of listening evangelization that helps you get a sense of where people have been in their spiritual journey and where they are now. You can have a meaningful threshold conversation in ten minutes — or much longer, depending upon what your friend has to say! A simple way to broach the topic is to say that if your friend feels comfortable, you would love to hear the story of his or her lived relationship or experience of God to this point in life. If people are willing to tell you their story, your job is to listen intently to understand what that journey has been like from their perspective.¹¹ We have seen people move through whole thresholds just by telling their story to someone who really listened.

4. Look for individuals to whom the seeker is close and who are spiritually farther along and help those friends reach out to support this individual as he or she grows closer to Jesus.

5. Is this individual already involved with or attending existing evangelization experiences, retreats, courses, or other opportunities at the parish or local level? If so, ask how those experiences are affecting him or her. If your friend is not yet involved, help him or her get connected.

A World in Spiritual Motion

I find it enormously helpful to keep reminding myself that everyone I meet is in spiritual motion. A man could essentially sleepwalk through his baptism because he fell in love with a Catholic girl and was jumping through the hoops of the RCIA process just to please his future in-laws. Then ten years later, he can experience a massive conversion and awaken to the power of the Gospel in amazing ways. Meanwhile, one of his friends might go through a period of spiritual fervor in high school and then lose interest while in college and walk away from both Jesus and his Catholic identity. Both possibilities (and many, many others) are present throughout our lives. St. Thomas Aquinas describes it this way: One can seek intentionally to grow in grace after baptism while another, through postbaptismal negligence, “baffles grace.”¹²

It seems incredible that puny human beings can baffle the grace of God by our lack of cooperation, but it is true. And to the extent that we do, we will bear little or no fruit. A classic observation by St. Francis de Sales is an essential corrective if we are going to live the lifelong conversion known as discipleship:

I am glad that you make a daily new beginning; there is no better means of progress in the spiritual life than to be continually beginning afresh.¹³

Lack of Prayer Is an Obstacle

One very significant obstacle to fruit-bearing is lack of prayer, which is at the heart of a relationship with God. Without prayer, all of our activity risks being fruitless. Recall that the seed in the parable dies not only when the birds eat it or when it falls on barren soil, but when it is choked by thorns that are “worldly anxiety, the lure of riches, and the craving for other things” (Mark 4:19).

That is why Pope Francis urges:

Let us call upon him today, firmly rooted in prayer, for without prayer all our activity risks being fruitless and our message empty. Jesus wants evangelizers who proclaim the good news not only with words but above all by a life transfigured by God’s presence.¹⁴

Disciple-Makers as Fruit-Farmers

The Catechism tells us:

The fruit of sacramental life is both personal and ecclesial. For every one of the faithful on the one hand, this fruit is life for God in Christ Jesus; for the Church, on the other, it is an increase in charity and in her mission of witness. (CCC 1134)

For every one of us, the fruit we bear has a profound impact on our personal maturation and holiness as disciples in Christ. But your fruit also increases the evangelical capacity of the whole Church: her love and ability to bear witness to Christ. The mission and compassion of the whole Church is fueled by your fruit. Today’s “nones” and “former Catholics” are seldom interested in our insider debates but are really intrigued and moved by the fruit that Christians bear. The fruit we bear “reveals” the presence and the love of God. Our fruit builds powerful bridges of spiritual trust and rouses spiritual curiosity. In the communion of saints, your fruit belongs to and somehow touches every other baptized person. But it is also true that the fruit that we were anointed by the Holy Spirit to bear but do not bear is a profound loss to both the Church and the world. In the economy of God, your fruit, my fruit, and the fruit borne by the whole Church is both a form of prayer and an answer to the world’s prayers.

There is someone out there right now who is waiting for what you have been given to give, and their life, their spiritual and personal destiny, hangs in the balance. You may not have met them yet. They may not even have been born yet, but in God’s providence, you are the one. It matters that you say “yes.”

So, what does this mean for those of us serving in some form of pastoral leadership? What does it mean to lead, to pastor, to govern a community of missionary disciples and fruit-bearers? Pope St. John Paul II describes it this way:

This munus regendi [governance] represents a very delicate and complex duty which, in addition to the attention which must be given to a variety of persons and their vocations, also involves the ability to coordinate all the gifts and charisms which the Spirit inspires in the community, to discern them and to put them to good use for the upbuilding of the Church in constant union with the bishops.¹⁵

All Catholic leaders — ordained or not — are, in a real way, called to be fruit-farmers, not just spiritual seed-scatterers. Everything we do is for the sake of producing an abundant harvest. Sustained, intentional evangelization changes everything by enriching the spiritual soil of individuals, families, and whole parish communities. Making disciples creates the conditions that will enable our sacramental seeds, which are filled with the life of God, to germinate, grow, and bear a rich harvest of fruit that will nourish the Church and bring Christ to the world.

¹ 2590 Karpos, Strong’s Concordance (online at http://biblehub.com/greek/2590.htm, as of May 5, 2017).

² See Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), 1832.

³ Lewis, The Weight of Glory, p. 29.

⁴ See Pope St. John Paul II, Christifideles Laici (on the vocation and mission of the laity), 16 (online at http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_30121988_christifideles-laici.html, as of May 5, 2017).

⁵ Carey Lodge, “John Wesley: 10 Quotes on Faith, Evangelism, and Putting God First,” Christian Today, June 28, 2016 (online at http://www.christiantoday.com/article/john.wesley.10.quotes.on.faith.evangelism.and.putting.god.first/89402.htm, as of May 5, 2017).

⁶ Pope St. John Paul II, Christifideles Laici, 32.

⁷ Ibid., 57.

⁸ Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (Charlotte, NC: TAN Books, 2009), p. 330.

⁹ Dom Anscar Vonier, A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist (Assumption Press, 2013), p. 3, emphasis added.

¹⁰ For more on the threshold of openness, read pp. 155-166 in Forming Intentional Disciples.

¹¹ For more about how to have a threshold conversation, read pp. 191-199 in Forming Intentional Disciples.

¹² St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, q69, a8 (online at http://www.newadvent.org/summa/4069.htm#article8, as of May 5, 2017).

¹³ St. Francis de Sales, “To a Lady. On the Distractions of a Busy Life. May 19, 1609,” in A Selection from the Spiritual Letters of St. Francis de Sales, translated by H. L. Sidney Lear (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1876), p. 122.

¹⁴ Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 259.

¹⁵ Pope St. John Paul II, Pastores Dabo Vobis, 26.