Not only am I not preaching this weekend, I am only serving at one Mass. The Mass I served was the Vigil Mass last night. It's been a while since I did what I used to do the first weekend of each month, which is take a little rest. Nonetheless, I think this week's readings are worth a short reflection.
It is pretty well-known that the vine imagery the inspired author of John's Gospel employs in today's Gospel is taken from the Hebrew Bible. In what we Christians refer to as the Old Testament, the vine is an image of Israel, of God's people. In our Gospel for this Fifth Sunday of Easter, it remains an image of God's people. In short, it is an image of communion. Christianity is inherently communal, which is why there is a Church, for better or for worse.
What can easily be ignored in all the explanations of the meaning of the image of the vine and branches is the necessity of pruning grapevines. Grapevines that aren't skillfully pruned don't bear fruit. This goes back to the inherently communal nature of God's people: we're better for the worse. Belonging to any community has its ups and downs. This is even (especially?) true of the community of marriage and family. It stands to reason that belonging to a parish, which a lot of people avoid, preferring to be ecclesial nomads, exhibits this same dynamic.
As Jesus indicates, the word of God prunes us. This can remain very abstract. A clue to what Jesus means can be found in our second reading, also taken from the Johannine corpus. It has to do with keeping his commandments. It seems pretty natural that when we hear the phrase "keep the commandments" our minds go to a list of rules to keep.
In our passage from First John, it is reiterated that what is meant by keeping God's commandments is to love God and to love our neighbor. The pruning comes when the going gets tough, like forgiving someone who wronged you, praying for and being benevolent toward your enemy, someone who opposes you. It is assumed you will have enemies. As the saying goes, having no enemies means you've never stood up for anything, at least nothing that matters.
Interestingly, our Responsorial is from Psalm 22. The opening words of Psalm 22 are what Jesus recited as he hung dying on the cross: "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" The lament ends with the third verse of the Psalm. The subsequent twenty-nine verses are a psalm of praise. This is the kind of pruning referred to in our Gospel. This is stated beautifully in the opening words of our Collect for today: "Almighty ever-living God, constantly accomplish the Paschal Mystery within us..." What is the Paschal Mystery but dying and rising, being pruned to bear fruit for God's kingdom.
We have a concrete example of this in our reading from Acts. The Jerusalem community is suspicious of Saul. Why? Well, according to the Acts narrative, it was because he formerly persecuted them, culminating in the stoning of Stephen. He had left Jerusalem to go to Damascus to persecute followers of the Way there. Was this a ruse to infiltrate the community? It fell to Barnabus to vouch for the authenticity of Saul's conversion and his subsequent faith. The community forgave and embraced a murderous enemy. They were pruned and so bore more fruit.
It wouldn't take much longer for the Jerusalem Church to be scattered as the result of persecution. While this was no doubt harrowing for those forced to flee, we see in the example of Philip, who, along with Stephen, was one of the seven chosen by the Jerusalem community and set apart by the apostles for service to the community, that this pruning made the branches more fruitful because it resulted in the spread of the Gospel. Of course, Saul's subsequent missions to the Gentiles also occurred.
It would be remiss not to mention the Eucharistic dimension of the vine and branches analogy. Community/communal/communion. Our participation in the Eucharist is what connects to each other through Christ, making us, the Church, the Verum Corpus, his true Body. This is the meaning of the observation, usually attributed to Saint Teresa of Avila, that Christ has no hands, no feet, etc., in the world but ours.
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