Oh, to Be a Good Tree

Gospel Reflection for March 2, 2025 - Luke 6:39-45

And he spoke also to them a similitude: Can the blind lead the blind? do they not both fall into the ditch?

The disciple is not above his master: but every one shall be perfect, if he be as his master.

And why seest thou the mote in thy brother's eye: but the beam that is in thy own eye thou considerest not?

Or how canst thou say to thy brother: Brother, let me pull the mote out of thy eye, when thou thyself seest not the beam in thy own eye? Hypocrite, cast first the beam out of thy own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to take out the mote from thy brother's eye.

For there is no good tree that bringeth forth evil fruit; nor an evil tree that bringeth forth good fruit.

For every tree is known by its fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns; nor from a bramble bush do they gather the grape.

A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth that which is evil. For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. (Luke 6:39-45 DRA)

The Gospel reading for this Sunday follows from the passage read last Sunday and is an appropriate preparation for the holy season of Lent, which begins this week on Ash Wednesday. These words are addressed specifically to the apostles; as such, they still apply in some way to every Christian, but most of all to the leaders of the Church, the bishops and, as their ministers, the priests who are the successors of the apostles.

Our Lord warns His disciples against the sins of hypocrisy and complacency. In their leadership of the Church, they, like all Christians, will be tempted continuously by worldliness, to blend in with the world instead of standing apart from it in holiness and thereby risking its rejection. This is the “tribulation” of which the first reading from Sirach spoke, the suffering that comes from resisting the ways of the world and its dominion by Satan, who seeks to punish those who fight his seductions while rewarding those who serve him in evil. The hierarchy of the Church, even more than lay Christians, should be beacons of sanctity to the world, leading all people closer to the truth who is Christ, not men who blind themselves to the true Light and thus lead those blinded by sin into the ditch of damnation.

This worldliness in the hierarchy of the Church has always been a challenge for those given the high and arduous mission of Holy Orders, particularly for those bishops and priests who live in affluence and exert greater power over their flock. In earlier times, this power often manifested in a secular way, as many bishops also possessed feudal land and political authority, but today, it is more often a spiritual power, especially as many Catholics are insufficiently catechized in their own Tradition and its dogmas and are thus unable to discern which statements of the bishops are reliable and which are not through the sensus fidelium.

Many Catholics fall into the error of hyperpapalism, which treats every word and action of the pope and even of the bishops in general and, by extension, priests as if it were infallible, vastly exceeding the limits on infallibility set by the First Vatican Council which restricted it to official, definitive teaching on faith and morals alone. While other teaching and discipline is authoritative, it is only binding if it is in accordance with Catholic Tradition. In this way, by their worldliness many clergymen place thorns and brambles amid the good fruits of the Gospel which they are given and tasked with distributing to all people, preventing the faithful from profiting as they should from the ineffable gifts of the Holy Ghost in the Church.

One of the greatest difficulties in applying Our Lord’s teachings in this passage is the fact that many leaders of the Church, and Christians in general, can seem to be good while in fact being wicked. This goes towards the original meaning of the word “hypocrisy” as stage-acting or playing a part. Many Christians will give an outward appearance of goodness while concealing the evil that is truly within them, effectively poisoning their fruits which otherwise appear to be edible. But this hypocrisy can only deceive man – not God, as he told the prophet Samuel, “Look not on his countenance, nor on the height of his stature: because I have rejected him, nor do I judge according to the look of man: for man seeth those things that appear, but the Lord beholdeth the heart.” (1 Sam 16:7) Likewise, St. Cyril of Alexandria wrote,

Each man’s life also will be a criterion of his character. For not by extrinsic ornaments and pretended humility is the beauty of true happiness discovered, but by those things which a man does; of which he gives an illustration, adding, For of thorns men do not gather figs. (Catena Aurea)

But ultimately, every baptized Christian is a disciple of Christ, and so Our Lord’s words apply in some way to all of us. How many of us are like the protagonist of Oscar Wilde’s classic novel The Picture of Dorian Grey, outwardly presenting a façade of humility, kindness, civility and integrity to the world, while in our homes and in our hearts, we are revealed to be shriveled with the rot of envy, bloated with pride and wraithed with lust into a mere shadow of what we are called to be as humans made in the image of God and incorporated into Christ in His Church? We only hope that no one will see this true picture of us, the one we keep hidden away from sight, sometimes even veiled from our own awareness, yet never concealed from God. This is why, in the verse immediately after this reading, Christ will ask, “And why call you me, Lord, Lord; and do not the things which I say?”

The true shame and tragedy in these exhortations is that Christians are not meant to be thorny, barren trees with only poisoned fruit or no fruit, which is all we can usually expect from the world and by which we only reaffirm people’s ordinary experience. Rather, we are meant to be good trees. This is in fact the theme of a song by the Catholic bluegrass band the Hillbilly Thomists, whose members are friars of the Dominican Province of St. Joseph. Through their beautiful lyrics and melody, they illustrate the truly supernatural and divine goodness which Christians are empowered by the grace of the Holy Ghost to bring into the world, to show humanity that the pleasures of this life are only signs pointing to God, who is Goodness itself, and that the Gospel isn’t “too good to be true” but has actually been lived out by countless saints, canonized or not, throughout the centuries.

We can bring good fruit from the Tree of Life into the deserts of this world, with rivers of living water flowing as sap from our boughs into the parched sands, allowing the birds – men who know only the burning Sun but not the loving warmth of the Son – to find shade under our leaves. This is the vocation of every Christian disciple – and imagine how different our world we be if every Catholic truly lived out their faith.

The Hillbilly Thomists – “Good Tree”[1]

You can't gather grapes

From a bramble bush

Or pick a fig from thorns

Oh, would I like to be

Oh, to be a good tree

Some fall in the rocks

On the beaten path

Some sink into rich soil

From a tiny seed

Grows a good tree

Like a cedar high

And mustard wide

Where all of the birds

Of the air can hide

Find rest inside

Oh, a good tree

The beetle bites

The black rot strikes

The weevil eats from the inside

Have your enemies

Oh, if you're a good tree

High and dry

Some branches die

From time to time, a prune's required

If you wanna be

Oh, a good tree

Even when I'm old

I will still be

Still full of sap

Still green

That's what I want to be

Oh, to be a good tree

By Your Word

The darkness light

The tree of death

Becomes the tree of life

So let it be

Oh, to be a good tree

Oh, to be a good tree

Oh, to be a good tree

Oh, to be a good tree

Oh, to be a good tree

(Cover image source: By WomEOS - Gethsemane Garden (Mount of Olives), CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34703091)

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[1] Source, with biblical references: https://genius.com/The-hillbilly-thomists-good-tree-lyrics