Lasting fruit

Just this week, I was asked by Nickynic, my cousin A.'s son, to be his confirmation sponsor. To 'fulfil' the role, I started quizzing him at the dinner table. "So, what are the fruit of the Spirit?" A typical teenager, he was clueless. Little did he know, I was no better, for I have but a vague recollection myself. Now, that won't do at all. How am I supposed to be a role model to this man-child? Plus my other three god-sons and newly minted god-daughter? So onto the Net I went.

While St. Paul quote nine in Galatians 5:22: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control...", the tradition of the Church lists twelve: "charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, chastity".

These are virtues I aspire to, on a daily basis, failing miserably in some and making some headway in others. Purely by grace alone, lemme tellya.

Given the stress I've placed myself under by deciding to take my Polestar Pilates exam end-March, while having committed myself to a major writing project with Sr. Julia and helping out with B.'s Subway venture, patience is severely lacking. I sometimes feel I've turned into this grouchy old trout. It doesn't take much to trigger the screaming banshee inside of me who emerges as a selfish, self-righteous virago. I don't like myself much when this happens and it's happening with alarming frequency, much to my dismay. Ah yes, much prayer needed here.

While we are called to bear fruit, we can only do so if we abide in Him. Financial success, fame, power, these are not lasting fruit, especially when we forget that everything comes from Him and we should, in turn, share what we have received. Worse yet, some fruit of the Spirit are perceived as signs of weakness in today's world and disparaged as archaic, out-moded.

Sometimes I feel as if I am living in the Twilight Zone for what I hold dear and values I subscribe to are "all so last season, dah-ling" and I am tempted to "get with the programme", abandon the course I've charted these last few years and be the smart cookie who makes it big.

When I attended the Pastoral Counselling School in Bangalore, India in 2003, the first Word I received was this: "I am the vine, you are the branches." I have since learnt that this beautifully written metaphor of the vine comes from John 15. It resonates with me whenever I read it and I am renewed by this exhortation by Jesus. Time and time again. For we are called to live in the Spirit. Utterly. Totally.

So what if what I do now is rejected as stupid and self-indulgent? Or I am perceived as lazy, irresponsible, ineffective, a failure and a screwball? So what if I lost everything I wanted so much in life by leaving the boat, like Peter, to walk on water? Miracles can only happen if we follow Him and follow through with what we believe in.

Sometimes there are great costs attached to it for dying unto one's self, one's worldly desires is no easy task. And yet, I would gladly lose all I have again, despite the heartache, for the miracles I have experienced, the truths that have been revealed to me, the riches I have received are beyond measure. This deep, intimate communion with Jesus, as the Mastercard ad goes: Priceless.

Let me be like a tree planted in the house of the Lord:

"In old age they still produce fruit; they are always green and full of sap." (Psalm 92:14)