Scripture for Your Inner Outcasts

Transcript

Speaker 1: For no good tree bears bad fruit. Nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit.

Speaker 2: Welcome back to Scripture for your inner outcasts. It's September 12th, 2026, Saturday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time. Today's guest presenter is Christy. Christy. Christy is a mom of eight, a mental health nurse practitioner with the neuro elite in Indiana and the host of the podcast Nurse Burnout Recovery.

Speaker 1: Our reading today comes from Luke six in the gospel, verse 43, where it says, for no good tree bears bad fruit. Nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit. Now I have a sweet little exile. She's been around for a very, very long time, and she learned very early that her worth is tied to her work. She has learned that in order for people to love her, she has to produce. And when I read Jesus's words today a good tree does not bear rotten fruit. I think about this sweet little one who learned very early that she had better produce some pretty good fruit. She learned somewhere along the way that being loved and being good were somehow connected to what she could produce. She needed to get good grades. She needed to behave. She needed to not cause problems. She needed to be helpful. She needed to get it right. She needed to make people proud of her. She needed to be successful because somewhere deep inside this little one started to believe, if I do enough good things, then maybe that means I'm good. And the opposite. Oh, it became terrifying. What if I fail? What if I disappoint someone? What if I'm not as good as everyone thinks I am? What if they find out I'm really not enough? But as I reflected on these words, I noticed something about Jesus's words today.

Speaker 1: The tree. It comes first. Then comes the fruit. Jesus doesn't say that a tree frantically produces good fruit until it eventually earns the right to become a good tree. However, my system. It absolutely does that. Jesus says that the tree bears fruit from what is already within it. And I wonder if this sweet little part has spent a lot of our life getting that a little bit backwards. She's been trying to produce enough good fruit to prove that she's good. To prove that I'm good to my family, to my parents, to my friends, to my teachers, to everyone around me. And yea, even to God. The reality is, I know that I don't have to prove my worth to God. I know logically that he already knows me. I know logically that he knew me before I accomplished anything. I know that he knew me and loved me before I got the grade, before I earned the degree, before anyone ever applauded me, before I ever did anything impressive at all. And I logically know that he loved me then, and he loves me now, and I logically know that the fruit was never supposed to carry the weight of proving that I am worthy of love. However, it has taken that exile a really long time and she is still a work in progress. Legit. Still a work in progress to learn that she can put the job down.

Speaker 1: That she doesn't have to earn her identity. That she doesn't have to achieve her way into being loved. That she doesn't have to prove to God that she's a good tree, that she can let the fruit grow from a heart that already knows it's loved. But if you ever feel this, and I know I still do that you're working and working and working and you have to keep working because that little exile needs to be protected. Then know you're not alone. Know that yes, logically, we are loved. We can let the fruit grow from a heart that already knows it's loved. But internally, as I continue to connect that part that might feel, that might still feel that her worth is tied to her work, tied to what she produces. I don't think my job is to convince her that she's wrong. I don't think I need to tell her to stop working so hard. I don't even think I need her to believe me. Yet when I tell her that she's already loved. Maybe my job right now is simply to understand her, because I think that's another invitation, in Jesus's words, about good fruit and bad fruit. We can spend so much time looking at the fruit. Is this good? Is it bad? Am I doing enough? Am I getting it right? Am I being good enough? And that little girl has spent a lifetime watching the fruit because she believes the fruit told her something about who she was.

Speaker 1: But Jesus keeps bringing me back to that tree. When I turn toward this little one, I don't want to evaluate her fruit. I don't want to look at her perfectionism, her striving, her need to achieve, and decide whether those things are good or bad. I want to understand why this little girl came to believe that producing good fruit was how she stayed safe, and how she stayed loved. Because when I see her, I don't see something bad that needs to be fixed. I see a little girl who learned a very clever way to survive in the world. So maybe I don't need to ask her to put that job down. Maybe I can just sit beside her. Maybe I can say. I see why you work so hard. I understand why getting it right matters so much to you. And maybe that's enough. Because Jesus's words aren't an invitation to anxiously inspect every piece of fruit hanging from our branches and decide whether it proves we're good or bad. Maybe they're an invitation to pay attention to what is happening deeper within us, to tend to the tree and maybe the fruit. I think it'll take care of itself.

Speaker 2: On the website of our parent organization, Souls and hearts.com, you will find all kinds of resources related to the topics discussed in today's episode and everything relating to Catholicism and parts work. We also have joined the 2020s along with the rest of the world, and now have an AI assistant on our website, so you can go there and ask it any question, and it will comb through the Souls and Hearts content archives to give you an answer. And again, that is linked in the description of today's show. With that, we'll end with our invocations. Our lady, our mother, Untier of knots. Pray for us. Saint Joseph, pray for us. Saint John the Baptist pray for us.