One of the images of the Christian life that St. Augustine used was an upside-down fruit tree. This tree has its roots in heaven and grows with its leaves and branches hanging down toward the earth, and its fruit is available for the benefit of any and all. Each of us is called to be this upside-down fruit tree. Each of us is called to bear fruit for the kingdom of God and for the benefit of our fellow human beings.
The upside-down tree has its roots in heaven because the ultimate source of our fruitfulness is God. The more deeply our lives are rooted in God and the more we allow the Holy Spirit to be the “sap” flowing through our “arboreal arteries,” the more fruit we will bear for the kingdom.
It’s possible that the earthly inspiration for St. Augustine’s “upside-down fruit tree” metaphor was the baobab tree, which grows in Madagascar, mainland Africa, the Arabian peninsula, and Australia. One of the nicknames for the baobab tree is, in fact, “the upside-down tree,” partly because its branches often look like roots that are reaching for the sky. Interestingly, the baobab tree is also known as the “tree of life,” further enhancing the meaningfulness of this metaphor for Christian discipleship. The “tree of life” nickname for the baobab derives from several of its key characteristics:
- The baobab tree’s massive trunk can store huge amounts of water, making it an important water source during dry periods.
- The baobab’s ability to store water also enables it to produce nutrient-rich fruit, even in periods of little or no rain.
- A wide variety of animals derive food, water, and shelter from the baobab tree.
- Baobabs can have long life spans (sometimes surviving for thousands of years), making them apt symbols of resilience and life.
Hans Urs von Balthasar referred to St. Augustine’s image of the upside-down fruit tree in his own writing, and Balthasar made spiritual fruitfulness a central theme of his theology. Many Christians today tend to think of our “fruitfulness” as followers of Christ primarily in terms of external actions, such as charitable giving or work aimed at social justice. While Balthasar certainly would have agreed that such actions are extremely important, he chose to focus his comments regarding spiritual fruitfulness on two other potential sources—sources some may not consider as much these days: prayer and suffering.
Balthasar insisted that prayer is actually more fruitful than any external action in which we might engage. He once described Christian prayer as “a sluice gate that has been opened up, permitting the water of heavenly grace to flow out into the world.” As this conduit of grace, as this channel of God’s power and love pouring out into the world, prayer can yield much more spiritual fruit than any of our external actions and efforts.
Balthasar made a similar argument with regard to suffering, claiming that Christian suffering is “at least equally as fruitful for the salvation of the world” as any external activity. Suffering that we offer up for the benefit of God’s kingdom or on behalf of another person or for any other spiritual intention derives its fruitfulness from its participation in Jesus’ redemptive suffering:
[Jesus] includes genuine Christian suffering—whether it be spiritual suffering, sickness, torture, or martyrdom endured for Christ’s sake—in the redemptive fruitfulness of his atoning Passion. Since Jesus’ existence is an existence-for and his Passion is a suffering-for, everything suffered in following him and focusing on him is marked by this purpose, by a redemptive fruitfulness (Light of the Word).
One of the most beautiful aspects of Balthasar’s discussion of spiritual fruitfulness lies in his emphasis on the fact that God can apply the spiritual fruits of our charitable actions, our prayers, our suffering, etc., across all of time and space in the communion of saints. Because of this, we cannot always know in this life what the fruits of our actions have been, nor can we measure the fruitfulness of those actions in any definitive way. For now, we often must simply trust that God will distribute those fruits to the people, places, and times most in need of them. But in the life to come, Balthasar assures us, God will reveal all of the fruits of our efforts to us, and those fruits will, as Balthasar puts it, “astonish [us] as the highest beatitude.”