I have eight fruit trees in my backyard that I have planted over the last several years, all in various states of development. I don't spray, but I do fertilize with grass clippings and other organic matter. I'm currently in a losing battle with a pernicious squirrel that has plucked every piece of fruit from my seven year old Asian pear tree, so I can't speak much to abundant harvests at this point. But there is an often-overlooked act of tree maintenance, and that is pruning.
Until you get comfortable with it, it can be intimidating and counter-intuitive to snip and lob off branch after branch from something you raised from a small sapling. The idea is to focus all the energy of the tree into producing fruit, rather than vegetation, since fruit trees are both ornamental and productive. When you have too many branches, it can crowd the canopy, impede air flow, encourage disease, and reduce the size and quality of fruit. Even when fruit is forming, a skilled arborist will pinch off maybe every other fruit that is developing so that the ones left will a produce bigger and more bountiful crop. "But doesn't that cut your production in half?" one might ask. You really have to trust those who know what they are doing to go in on pruning. But the results are almost always beneficial.
"Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit," our Lord says in John 15:2. Notice that it is the Lord who is the Master Gardener who does the pruning.
I think back to the period in my life about ten years ago when the company I kept was not edifying my faith. I very strongly felt that hesitancy to cut away branches of friends, even though the fruit that was being produced in my faith life was smaller and not very sweet. Just as I had prayed at points for Catholic community ("Lord, send me some brothers," in the spirit of St. Francis), I also prayed that he might clear out the canopy to make room for people of faith when I couldn't do the pruning myself. As I found myself growing in my faith and questioning the efficacy of my fence-straddling between Christ and the world, trying to appease both, this prayer was being answered. First it was my friend J, the story of which I recounted in "The Day That Cost Me My Friend." Overnight a big branch of friendship was cut off, and it hurt, the way you kind of wince when you prune a tree.
Then there were my secular friends from Philly, when I noticed more distance and less invitations to things the closer I got to my faith. One by one, they stopped calling, we hung out less, and now there's only really one guy I stay in touch with. Again, it hurt and was confusing, but was for the purpose of producing the fruit of faith which was being impeded when all my energy was going to maintaining the cognitive dissonance of being a "man of two minds," as St. James writes.
Even in the faith, though, there are people we need to have pruned from our lives, or do the pruning ourselves. A lot of auxiliary Catholic friends through social media were one example of these kinds of "suckers"--vigorous vertical growth originating from the root system or lower main stem of a plant. Plant suckers are usually undesirable—you want the plant, but you don’t want its suckers because they sap the plant’s energy. Some I kept, and they have become friends, but others it was just as well because they really weren't contributing anything to growth. Then there were some of the diseased or toxic Catholics that weren't really adding anything of value to my life, but were bringing it down by their negativity or combativeness.
One thing I noticed was that while I have a healthy tolerance for diverse opinion and differences, my life has gotten much more peaceful the more I have been pruned of people from my life that sucked energy or were simply contrarians or antagonists, which ultimately distracted me from my family or distracted me from my ultimate responsibilities. I almost took pride in how many "little fruits" I could count on the buds of the branches. But any experienced gardener knows five hundred plumb, healthy stonefruit are better than a thousand crabapples.
When the Lord prunes people from our lives, it can hurt but is ultimately for our good, and there is a reason He does it. It's good to pray, when we are honest and humble, "Lord, if this is not good for me, take it away," as much as we pray for God to send good things into our lives. Even now, I have to spend time in discernment as to what relationships to invest energy into, and which ones to ultimately let the Lord prune. It's not always active--sometimes it just happens that people come into your life for a season and leave. That always hurts a little too, but it's just a natural cycle. I think Divine Providence knows who and what is best for us, and grace is the best way of allowing the Holy Spirit to lead people into our lives or out of it.
Pruning is not an exact science--it is more an art that is carried out effectively when the pruner has the gifts of observation, intuition, and vision. Social relationships are like that. We do it imperfectly in this life, but when left to God to do the pruning for us, He produces more in us than we ever could on our own apart from the vine, which is Christ.
"You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you." (Jn 15:16)
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