Homily

Today is the fifth Sunday "of" Easter. It is the fifth time that the constant yet unique day of the Resurrection comes. This is what it is every Sunday. The days on which we celebrate the resurrection come faithfully, as if a sign of God’s faithfulness; Sundays come back even if many times we are the ones who are absent; they return so that we all can remain in Easter and meet Jesus risen. This is why the ancient Christians repeated, "We cannot live without Sunday," that is "we cannot live without meeting the risen Jesus." We could apply to this Sunday the parable of the vine and the branches, where the vine resembles Sunday and the branches the other days of the week. The week days remain without fruit if they are not vitalized by the spirit that we receive in the holy liturgy of Sunday. Remaining in Sunday, that is keeping in our heart what we see, listen to and live in the holy liturgy, means to make the following days more fruitful.
The Word of God underlines the need of "remaining" in Jesus, a theme particularly dear to the Apostle John. In his first letter he says, "All who obey his commandments abide in God, and he abides in them." And the terms "remain" and "abide" are the heart of the parable of the vine and the branches. The image of the vineyard, with its religious symbolism, was well known to the disciples. One of the designs that most garnished the temple that Herod built in Jerusalem and that Jesus attended was a golden vine with bunches of grapes as tall as people. But mostly in the Scriptures the theme of the vineyard was among the most meaningful, expressing the relationship between God and his people: "Turn again, O God of hosts; look down from heaven, and see; have regard for this vine, the stock that your right hand planted," invokes the psalmist (Ps 80). And Isaiah, in the beautiful "song of the vineyard" describes God’s disillusionment with Israel, his vineyard, that he had taken care of, planted, dug up, defended, but from which he received only bitter fruit. Jeremiah rebukes the people of Israel: "Yet I planted you as a choice vine, from the purest stock. How then did you turn degenerate and become a wild vine?"(2:21).
In Jesus’ words there is a dramatic change, the vine is not Israel anymore, but he himself: "I am the true vine." No one had ever said it. In order to understand these words fully it is important to collocate them in the context of the last supper, the occasion upon which Jesus pronounced them. That night he spoke with his disciples at length, in a complex and grave tone, a tone that is proper to the last moments of life: a genuine last will. In his first speech Jesus clarifies that the true guide of the people is God. And he tells them: "I am the good shepherd." Soon after, beginning his second speech he says, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower." Jesus identifies himself with the vine and specifies that he is the "true" vine, obviously differentiating himself from the "false."
But he is not an isolated vine. Jesus adds, "I am the vine, you are the branches." The disciples are linked to the Teacher, and they are an essential part of the vine. There is no vine without branches and vice versa. We could say that the disciples’ link with Jesus is like that of the vine with the branches, essential and strong. It is a link that goes well beyond our up and down moods, our good and bad situations. The old biblical sign of the vineyard reappears here with all its strength. With Jesus starts a vineyard that is larger and broader than the previous one and greatest of all a new sap, the agape, God’s love, passes through it. The strength of this love is sensational: it allows the vineyard to produce much fruit. Jesus says, "My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit." Papias, one of the Apostolic Fathers, wrote beautiful words to comment on this Gospel page: "Days will come in which vineyards will be born with ten thousand vines each. Each vine will have ten thousand branches and each branch will have ten thousand vine leaves and each vine leaf ten thousand bunches of grapes. Each bunch of grapes will have ten thousand grapes and each squeezed grape will give an abundant measure of wine."
The Gospel continues, "Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit." Yes, those who "bear fruit" also pass through the moment of pruning. This refers to those prunings that from time to time are necessary, as it happens in the natural life, so that we can be "without a spot" (Eph 5:27). The Gospel text does not mean that God sends pain and suffering to his best children in order to test or purify them. This is not how we should understand the pruning. The Lord does not need to intervene with suffering in order to better his children. The truth is much simpler. Spiritual life is an itinerary, or, if we want, a growth. This process is never given for granted or natural, and it is not homogenous. Each of us has the experience of growing both good fruit and evil feelings, selfish habits, cold and violent attitudes, malevolent thoughts, impulses of envy and pride... Here is where pruning is necessary, and not only once, for those feelings come back, even if in different ways and manifestations. There is no age in life in which we should not change and be corrected, that is pruning.
Those cuts, that sometimes are also very painful, purify our life and allow the sap of the Lord’s love to pass through with more freshness. Six times in eight lines, Jesus repeats, "abide in me," "remain in the vine." This is the condition for us to bear fruit, to not dry up and therefore be cut and burnt. Probably that night the disciples did not understand; at most they were wondering what it meant to abide in him if he was going away. Truly Jesus was pointing to a simple way to remain with him; we can remain in him if "his words abide in us." It is the way of Mary, his mother who "kept all these things in her heart." It is the way that Mary, Lazarus’ sister, chose, she who was staying at Jesus’ feet. It is the way proposed to each disciple. In the Byzantine tradition there is a splendid icon that reproduces this Gospel parable. At the centre of the picture there is the trunk of a vine on which Jesus is seated with the open Scriptures. From the trunk start twelve branches on which an apostle is seated with the scripture open in their hands. It is the icon of the new vineyard, the image of the new community that starts from Jesus, the true vine. That open book in Jesus’ hands is the same the apostles have: it is the true sap that allows all to "love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action."