Our real fertility and our barrenness

THE gospel episode about the barren Elizabeth, the cousin of Mary, who because of the faith of her husband, Zachary, managed to bear a son who later on became John the Baptist, the precursor of Christ, (cfr. Lk 1,5-25) simply tells us that the key to cure whatever barrenness we have in this life is to have faith in God. 

 Indeed, we can only be truly fruitful and productive if we are vitally connected with God through Christ in the Holy Spirit. Our fruitfulness and productivity may come in different forms that can seem to contradict the worldly standards, but it surely can only come if we are vitally united with God. 

 Let’s remember what Christ said in the parable of the vine and branches. “I am the vine, you are the branches,” he said. “If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (Jn 15,5) 

 There we can get a clear idea of what is to be fertile and what is to be barren. We should therefore try our best to be united with God by always strengthening our faith and obedience to God’s will and ways. We can never overemphasize this requirement. 

 When we have this vital connection with God, we can expect to have real spiritual growth, marked by an increasing love for God and neighbor. We can carry out many good works despite our limitations. We can develop many positive character traits as we become more and more identified with God in whose image and likeness we have been created. 

 We just have to make sure that we are regularly nourishing our spiritual life by availing ourselves of the spiritual acts of piety—prayer, sacrifices, recourse to the sacraments, ascetical struggle, etc.—much like what we do to maintain our physical life—eating, exercising, working, etc. 

 We need to see to it that we would always feel our total dependence on God even if we also have to make full use of whatever natural endowments we have. We should be wary of our tendency to be on our own alone, especially when we happen to have some resources that can make us feel that way. 

 Let’s make no mistake about this. We always need God. On our own, we can only do evil, and no matter what we do, we can never be fruitful and productive as we ought to be. We may manage to have some appearances of fruitfulness and productivity, but to be sure, they can only be fake. Whatever good we think we can do without God can only be apparent. 

 Without corresponding to God’s will and ways, we are bound to misuse our human powers. If our first parents, still in their state of original justice, managed to sin because in a moment they lapsed into forgetting God and following the suggestion of the devil, how much more us who have been born already with the handicap of the original sin. 

 Without corresponding to God’s will and ways, the use of our human powers will be distorted and will just convert into all kinds of isms. Our intellectual activity, for example, will fall into intellectualism, the exercise of our will into voluntarism, the joy of our sentiments into sentimentalism. 

 For us to correspond properly to God’s will and ways, we need to be always humble, always feeling the need to be in his presence and to know his will in an abiding manner. May it be that no moment passes without being with God and interacting with him. 

 This is how we can truly be fertile.