Dear friends,

The vine, which can be a bit foreign in northern climates like Chicago, is natural for anyone in the Mediterranean area, especially in Tuscany famous for its wines.

Many families possess a vine, a fig tree, or olive trees in their gardens and they are able to understand this allegory by Jesus because it is quite concrete.

Those who are not much of a gardener will have some problem. As city-dwellers, they are lucky if they can keep a few houseplants alive.

As a farm-boy the allegory is quite clear to me. To prune and to graft are special arts to be learned under the supervision of an expert farmer. What is especially difficult is to learn how to prune parts of a plant that still have life in them, even if they have stopped flowering. It is not much of a problem clipping off parts that are clearly dead, but it is hard to decide to trim off something still living.

In today’s Gospel Jesus speaks of the Father as a vinedresser who prunes branches that are bearing fruit so that they will produce even more. Pruning and grafting are two things that require a knife. Pruning is a metaphor for passion. The emphasis is on the life that sprouts forth from the dying and the pruning.

Pruning is an activity to be done yearly, not once, but twice: in winter and in spring

In winter:

The cut vine-branches are scattered on the ground, tied up in bundles and used as fuel for fires and stoves, especially in the morning. Their smoke together with the aroma of the fresh brewed coffee announces the beginning of a new day.

Everyone familiar with farming knows that as soon as a vine-branch is cut off, it withers. Jesus could not express it more graphically: once separated from me, the true vine, you die! Hence the main point: ”Remain in me, and my life will remain in you!” the sap that flows from the vine onto the branches is called traditionally “grace”. If we don’t have a real contact with God then we are as dead as vine branches lying on the ground: we are good only for the fire, which in this case is a metaphor for Hell.

When in winter I was looking at the pruned vine I saw a desolating show: it looked like a dead stump deprived of life and unable to bloom again. The opposite is true, only in this way the vine can shoot forth strongly again in the spring.

In spring:

The vinedresser trims the vine back again: the branches must not shoot out to vigorously, otherwise the fruit will not be abundant; too much sap will be wasted on the leaves and not in the grapes.

In the Bible the vineyard is often an image for the Church. Sometime the church seems cut back so much that many people declare it to be already dead. Yet history proves that the church shoots forth again, better and stronger than before

The vinedresser:

God is the vinedresser for our lives and he uses a sharp knife. When He cuts us it hurts; the knife is the tribulations of all kinds that God allows to come on use, to cleanse us. He will cut only what it is not necessary: His hand and His knife are led by love. He knows what are unfruitful shoots for us and what has to be got rid of. He knows us through and through and He wants to set us free from wrong inclinations and from self-deception.

The vine:

It’s Jesus in whom the life-giving sap of God is flowing. Nothing works without Him. We can be doing a lot and be very active not only in the ordinary world, but even in the church; but without Christ, nothing will come of it. He recommends us: “remain in me”. How do we remain in Christ? By loving!

It is not the person who does a lot, who is extremely busy and engaged, but the one who loves. That is the fruit that God expects of us, the only good fruit. Without love we are nothing, but dead branches.

The sap:

It is what we used to call “state of grace” when in the vein of our souls flows the Holy Spirit. It is generated in the dark of the earth,: which is the hidden and mysterious way of God’s operation. The sap increases when manure is scattered around the trunks and stems: this manure might well   represent our failures and sinfulness. “Organic” is a trendy word and stands for natural cow dung, dead leaves, rotten organic matter.

The sap flows from the earth, through the branches till it reaches the leaves and the grapes: it is grace or, a better word for it, it is the Holy Spirit which unites us to Christ and finds is better expression in the abundance and goodness of the grapes which eventually will become wine. That reality which brings joy to the human heart.

The good news:

Physical branches once they have been cut off from the vine can not be grafted back, they are for ever dead. Not so with us. We can be reinserted into Christ through the Sacrament of reconciliation. We are given one more chance to grow and bear fruit.

The expression “Bearing fruit” occurs five times in today’s Gospel. It speaks of the fecundity in our relationship with God, and also of interdependence with the other branches on the vine.

Remaining in Jesus and abiding in Him

Abiding in Jesus includes being a living part of the life of the Church;  it means being committed to your Parish; in mutual support, prayer, common worship, sacramental life, study and not least, work for the Gospel.
The Sunday Eucharist unites us with Christ and with the church.