The Word of God teaches us "that by their fruits you shall know them" (Matthew7:6) and "every tree is known by its fruit"(Luke 6:44). The meaning is simple, and Jesus is essentially saying that the things that are evident in a person's life demonstrate what is really in their heart. A person can say whatever they want but what is true is what they are doing and the results of their claim. Jesus is teaching us how to discern the truth about others and about ourselves as well, which is what we'll focus on here, ourselves. It is imperative in our walk with the Lord that we cooperate with His Grace, so as good and helpful as it is to judge other trees by their fruit, it is even more important to taste our own fruit so that we may live and remain in His grace and live out His will for us. 

To judge our own fruit, we must know and understand the fruits of the Holy Spirit. The Fruits of the Spirit are changes in our character that come about through us inviting in and allowing the Holy Spirit to work within us and by cooperating with the gifts that He gave us in the sacrament of confirmation. There are seven gifts of the Holy Spirit and twelve fruits. Remember this: a gift is given, and fruit is grown. In order to bear the fruit of the gifts given us we must put those gifts to good use. We do this through prayer, fasting, and listening to the "still small voice" within us that is the Holy Spirit and then "do whatever he tells you." The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are: Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety, and Fear of The Lord. The Catholic tradition lists twelve fruits based on the Latin Vulgate-a 4th century Latin translation of the Bible.    "But the fruit of the Spirit is charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, mildness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, and chastity..."(Galatians 5:22-23).  Meanwhile, other Bible translations, such as the English Standard Version, list only nine fruits, excluding generosity, modesty, and chastity. In either case we can see that "fruits" are not of a material nature but are of a sublime, moral nature, a way of living and being.

 Since I am a traditional minded Catholic, I will dive into a study of the 12 fruits of the Holy Spirit and dedicate one month to each. I will not do them in the order listed in the Bible but in a random order determined by how I feel each is relevant to a particular month, for example, I'll concentrate on self-control in January because many people are focused on creating new habits and resolutions and in February I'll focus on love/charity because of Valentine's Day, and so on throughout the year. The reason I am focusing on the fruits and not the gifts is because that is the measure of judgement Jesus gave us as I quoted in the beginning. If we are serious Catholics and honest with ourselves, we can look at our lives in prayer and work out what we need, for example if one has a habit of gossiping then they are lacking in charity or self-control. There are many spiritual practices and exercises that can help us to grow our fruit. In this series I will explore and share these. I am not reinventing the wheel here, just sharing and summarizing the wisdom of the Word of God, His Holy Catholic Church and His saints. This is not an easy task and is a lifetime journey but it well worth it for Eternal Life with God in heaven is the ultimate reward. I hope will join me over the next year so we can learn and grow together.    

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