My physical life should be a reflection of the holiness of my spiritual life.
When I was a little girl, we children were terribly fussy with the fruit and vegetables we ate.
While we were very good at eating fruit and vegetables, we were very fussy about the quality of the fruit and vegetables. We would only eat fruit and vegetables if they were very firm, and frankly, not very juicy.
That same preference in fruit and vegetables has continued today. What this means is that I often eat fruit that is underripe and prefer to eat firm fruit with little juice in it than juicy sweet fruit.
I know this is a strange thing, and frankly, I have lost count of the number of times people have told me how silly this preference is because all the best fruit is ripe and juicy and delicious. Nevertheless, I – and my children – still prefer eating very firm fruit.
What this means is that it is very common for fruit to become too ripe for me to enjoy eating it only a short time after I have purchased it. And this means that often, the fruit could be put to waste because nobody – except my poor husband – would be interested in eating it after it had begun to ripen. And because I have always been aware of this, I have become very used to cooking deserts and pies and pastries that make use of stewed fruit. You see, while the fresh fruit is most delicious to me before it is fully ripened, the stewed fruit is quite delicious and as soft and squishy as you like, once it is covered in butter and sugar and baked into deliciousness…
And I have been thinking about this today. Saint Josemaria wrote in “The Way” at 1, “Don't let your life be barren. Be useful. Make yourself felt. Shine forth with the torch of your faith and your love. With your apostolic life, wipe out the trail of filth and slime left by the corrupt sowers of hatred. And set aflame all the ways of the earth with the fire of Christ that you bear in your heart.”
And I have been thinking about that today. Because this life on Earth is like the unripened fruit. It is hard and a little tasteless, and yet – because we are used to the ways of the world – it seems so delicious to us. I am accustomed to behaving in a certain manner and experiencing a certain results in this Earthly life, and so I continue to behave in similar ways and do similar things. And yet – just as the fruit quickly so too does my spiritual life reach for me quickly in this lifetime. And just as the stewed fruit is more delicious and enriched by butter and sugar, so too is my spiritual life an enrichment of my physical life, enriched – not be butter and sugar – but by Grace.
And this means that if my physical life is already sinful the fruit will be rotten and unsuitable for stewing, and it will be wasted. And I have been thinking about that today as I think about waste. For it seems that my physical life should be a reflection of the holiness of my spiritual life. And if that is not the case, the fruit of my life will be wasted and not stewed.
And that will be a terrible terrible waste.
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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