Sunday Evening: Good Fruit

Today’s reflections draw from the Daily Office gospels for both the Last Epiphany and the first Sunday of Lent.

Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. —John 12:24-25

In the first Gospel reading, we enter the moments right before Jesus is turned over to the authorities for torture and crucifixion. In these final moments, Jesus turns to the crowd, foreshadowing his death with an agrarian analogy: “a grain of wheat must fall and die to bear much fruit.” In this metaphor, Jesus offers himself as a pathway for us to follow that leads to a fruitful life. Illustrating a path where one must lose their life in order to save it. How do we as grains of wheat die to our life? In an increasingly chaotic world, our mind, heart, and self become crowded and cluttered with matters that need our attention. How are we to make room for the fruit of the Spirit:

love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

—Galatians 5:22–23

What does dying to oneself look like? How do we make room for what is coming?

In the Christian tradition, this time of year marks the beginning of Lent—a season that reminds us of our humanity: we are dust, and to dust we shall return. The tradition of fasting from food, a habit, or vice is often held out of devotion and sacrifice. In doing so, we pause to reflect and prepare for Easter. This brings us to our second gospel reading, where the Pharisees question Jesus why his disciples do not fast.

”Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day.

— Mark 2:18-20

Unfortunately, fasting during Lent often devolves into a ‘self-help’ practice, turning a sacred tradition into a personal mandate for self-improvement. In our noble attempts to disentangle our life, this way of fasting keeps ourselves as the center of our efforts. Like Adam and Eve in the Garden, we choose to partake of the “tree” that feeds the ego and self, leading us to a place where the seeds of scarcity, division, and comparison take root.

In Mark’s account, Jesus teaches that fasting is not about self-aggrandizement but about returning to the presence of the bridegroom. In this way, we do not look to our ego for fruit, but back to the vine that nourishes the branch. Jesus continues his rebuke of the Pharisees with a metaphor in Mark about removing the old to make room for what is coming.

No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.” — Mark 2:21-22

In this illustration, fasting is removing the old skins, our old patterns, to make room for the new wine that is to come. Dying to our ego, what many call the false self, we take on new wineskins, ready to receive what God has for us in this season. Becoming a new creation prepared to bear first fruit that nourishes the whole of creation, not just the individual branch that carries it. Franciscan Priest Richard Rohr puts it this way:

When you and I embrace Jesus’ essential paradox—that to lose is to gain and to die is to live—we come to God, who gathers up the broken pieces of the world and makes them more complete and beautiful than they were before they broke. God integrates all fractious dualities into the wholeness of life that Christians call eternal salvation. It’s a life we get to live here and now, by grace and faith. It’s the life toward which Lent has always pointed.

— Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations

From here, fertile ground is cultivated for new fruit to grow and new wine to be received. Through practices such as fasting, we die to ourselves by becoming new containers for the bridegroom to pour into.

Lent represents a season of fasting and reflection, holding significance from a diverse group of Christian traditions. There is more than one way to observe and honor this time of year. But as we commune together during this time, resist the urge to bend inward towards the ego. Good fruit does not come from adding more to our schedules, dieting, or simply giving up chocolate. While these may be good practices, they do not necessarily nourish the soul. German theologian Meister Eckhart says growth is not through practices of addition but from subtraction.

“The soul does not grow by addition but by subtraction.”

— Meister Eckhart

Fasting honors the Christ path and removes us from the throne of our lives. By doing so, we till the soil from which good fruit can flourish—adjusting our posture to receive something new. In the book Just This: Prompts and Practices for Contemplation, Richard Rohr observes how new growth cannot take root into the old self.

If we don’t see what is in our reservoir, we will understand all new things in the same old-patterned way—and nothing new will ever happen. A new idea held by the old self is never really a new idea, whereas even an old idea held by a new self will soon become fresh and refreshing. Contemplation actually fills our reservoir with clear, clean water that allows us to encounter experience free of our old patterns.

—Richard Rohr, Just This: Prompts and Practices for Contemplation

This Lent, resist fasting for the sake of the ego and instead reflect on what it truly means to lose one’s life in order to gain it. Good fruit is not meant for individual consumption—it nourishes the whole vine. Take time in this season to make room for what is coming. Fast, contemplate, and reflect, making room not just for personal transformation, but for the fruit that will nourish the world around you.

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