Homily

Today is the fifth Sunday “of” Easter. It is the fifth time that the constant yet unique day of the Resurrection returns. This is what every Sunday is. Sundays return faithfully, sign of God’s faithfulness: they return even if we are absent many times; they return so that we can all remain in Easter and meet the risen Jesus. 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 today’s parable of the vine and the branches to Sundays, where the vine resembles Sunday and the branches, the other days of the week. Weekdays remain fruitless unless they are 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 main facade of Temple that Herod built in Jerusalem and that Jesus saw was a golden vine with bunches of grapes as tall as people. But especially 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 that before. In order to understand these words fully it is important to collocate them in the context of the last supper when Jesus pronounced them. That night he spoke with his disciples at length, in a complex and grave tone, 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 one.” 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 a vineyard starts that is larger and broader than the previous one, and, greatest of all, through it passes a new sap, the agape, God’s love. 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, a bishop of the second century who had met the Apostles, 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 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 improve his children. The truth is much simpler. The spiritual life is an itinerary, or, if we want, a growth. This process is never given for granted or natural, nor is it homogeneous. 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 these feelings return even if in different ways and manifestations. There is no age in life in which we do not need to change and be corrected; that is pruning.
These 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 wondered 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,” as Jesus himself was underlining. It is the way of Mary, his mother who “kept and pondered all these things in her heart.” It is the way that Mary, Lazarus’ sister, chose, she who stayed at Jesus’ feet listening to him. 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 is the trunk of a vine on which Jesus is seated with the open Scriptures. From the trunk, twelve branches reach out on each of which is seated an apostle with the book of scripture open in his 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 as that of the apostles: it is the true sap that allows all to “love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”