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1. Acts 9:26-31
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2. 1Jn3:18-24
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Gospel: 15:
1-8
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Are you really a branch?
The gospel of today's
Sunday brings us Jesus' narratives in which Jesus passes His teaching to His
audience symbolically. The image Jesus uses to convey His teaching is the
picture of the vine and the branches.
Jesus said: I am the vine,
you are the branches. Whoever remain in me and I in him will bear much
fruit."
In Biblical tradition,
the vine is well-known biblical symbol of God's people. This is well clarified
in the psalm when Israelites were celebrating
the Exodus which is the deliverance of the Israelites from the slavery
of Egypt and their possession of the Promised Land, the psalmist pictures God
as vine grower: " A vine from Egypt you transplanted; you drove away the
nations and planted it." ( Ps 80:8)
The vine in growing has
got one characteristic that is, it grows luxuriant and thus drastic pruning is
necessary. We also know that the wood of the vine is good for nothing because
it is too soft for any purpose. The only
thing that can be done with the wood of the vine is to make a bonfire of it and
destroy it. With or without knowing what
a vine looks like, we know that " a branch bear fruit by itself; it can do
so only if it remains in the vine."
What Jesus wants to
teach us in today's gospel is the extreme necessity for us all to remain. Then
what does to " remain in Christ," mean? To remain in Christ means:
First and foremost, to
listen to Him and keep His words. Actually, we can refuse to listen to Him at
all or we can listen to Him and then render Him lip service unsupported by any
good deed. We can accept Him as Lord and then abandon Him in the midst of
difficulties and temptations or attributes all of our difficulties and
temptations to Him.
Second is to recognize
that Christ alone is the real Vine and that without Him we can do nothing of
value to God.
Third is to live in the
Church which is the Mystical Body of Christ, in accordance with the statement
of one of the popes who said that who does
not have the Church as his/her Mother,
cannot have God as his/her Father.
Fourth, is to see God
in all persons and things even in our enemies and those things that we don't
like. Just like a woman that she paid
the toll fees of the five cars behind her. May be because, the saying
influenced her, " Practice random kindness and senseless acts of
beauty."
Fifth, to remain in
Jesus is to have an active sacramental and prayer life. Do we pray always? Do
we regularly go to Mass on Sunday? Do we avail ourselves of the sacrament of
confession? May be let us make a list of how many hours do we pray; how many
hours do we spend for works, friends and family and in that we may be able to
rate something of ourselves. How about if we spend just a few minutes talking
about the word of God instead of talking less nothing?
Lastly is to be
convinced that there is a need to prune the structures, methods, approaches,
and others that have become old and obsolete in order to give way to the new
ones which in turn will themselves grow old, and to remain always with the
everlasting: Christ who himself is the
vine.
Let us always remain
faithful to the ideal teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ.
May the passion of our
Lord Jesus Christ be always in our hearts.
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