How the biblical scents, which you have explored in You consecrated me with a perfume of joy, did they lead you to take an interest in fruit?
In Chapter 4 of the Song of Songs, which is the heart of the heart of the poem, the meeting of the beloved and the beloved unfolds through both perfumes and fruits. It therefore seemed quite logical to me, once my work on biblical scents was finished, to get down to the fruits, to wander through the Bible in search of them.
What exactly is it to give or bear fruit in life? What fruit is it? This book is an invitation to ask ourselves these questions by letting us “move” in our usual readings of biblical texts. The construction site is open.
Isn’t it also in reaction to the multiple crises that the Church is going through and which are like the backdrop of your essay?
I started working on the theme before the publication of the report of the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (Ciase). But, indeed, the question “what is to fructify?” is all the stronger today. We can no longer read the metaphor of the tree that bears fruit (good or bad) as we were able to do in the past. It has been said too easily that if such a community bears “good fruit” (meaning: the members are numerous, beautiful and kind) then the tree is necessarily good.
This argument does not hold. It is not the external appearance of the tree, nor even its fruits, which from a distance can be numerous, it is the taste of the fruit, its flavor (is it rotten or good?) which tells the nature of the tree. ‘tree. We must therefore learn not to judge by appearance and learn to taste and discern good fruit from bad. Moreover, when read carefully, this parable of Matthew 7 is a tool for discerning false prophets. This should give us food for thought.
What does the Bible teach us about this discernment?
The first word that God addresses to man in the Bible is this command: “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). On the contrary to “multiply”, “bear fruit”, which comes from the Hebrew parah, does not only mean reproduction, but bearing fruit. In other words, to bear fruit is not to multiply.
In the biblical text, the criticism of enumerations, calculations or censuses of any kind is often severe. For example, Abraham cannot number his descendants, any more than the dust of the earth can be counted (Genesis 13:16). Or when David decides to number his people, things go very badly for him (1 Chronicles 21, 2)!
This criticism should alert us, we who always tend to count our successes in a logic of performance. It is not a question of praising what “fails” and denigrating what “works”, but of being careful about our criteria for success: they are mundane. The Bible never ceases to encourage the “little remnant”, the poor, the weak, the one who doesn’t look like much.
Why is the temptation to calculate dangerous?
Counting is already beginning to get your hands on the other, on the gifts of God, on a situation, etc. Now, the fruit is not to be seized, but to be received. It is not exterior, but interior. It is about welcoming the life of God as the tree feeds on the sap flowing through it. To stop being monopolized by oneself and to turn towards others, that is, I believe, to bear fruit. And no doubt it takes a lifetime to achieve this relinquishment of oneself in favor of the seizure of another.
Perseverance, patience, attention and a long time are necessary, just as a vine cannot produce good wine in three minutes! There are women in my community who are absolutely disinterested in themselves and who do not even have the idea of evaluating or weighing the “fruit” of their existence. God alone, ultimately, can judge. It is about a fundamental ignorance. This is the paradoxical logic of the grain of wheat which must die in order to bear fruit, of the fruit which agrees to join the earth to fertilize it and become fruit in the lives of men: “the more I give, the more I receive”, “the more I die, the more I live”… and the less I know.
It is the movement of Christ which has “empty of himself” to give us life (Philippians 2:7).
Yes, and he wants to teach us this kenosis, this deprivation of self. Basically, the unique fruit whose seed seeks soil is Christ. And the fruit of the Spirit, and there is only one, is that we become what we are, namely, if we have been baptized: to become Christ in our turn and for the world, to be the incarnation of Christ. A manifestation of his presence.
Such is the fructification requested by God from the first hours of Creation and which is the work of the Spirit for those who welcome it. It could be that the Christian life is nothing more than allowing the Word to take shape in our lives. Give him flesh. Give him our flesh.
Doesn’t the parable of the sower (Mark 4, 1-20) evoke this sowing?
It is indeed the word of God that sows the earth that we are. But in the Gospel of Mark, it seems that according to the ground where it falls (the edge of the road, etc.), it becomes false, seductive, empty and vain speech or straight speech, the parrhesia. The fruit therefore has something to do with the true, right word. This one does not twist the word of God, it does not make much noise. It is accompanied by actions consistent with it. The word that does what it says is an outcome, a fruit for the tree that is the human being. The fruit, very often, is therefore “the fruit of the lips”.