VINE AND BRANCHES - 5th Sunday of Easter (Cycle B)

Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter (Cycle B)

Based on Jn 15:1-8 (Gospel),  1 Jn 3:18-24 (Second Reading) and  Ac 9:26-31 (First Reading)

From the Series: “Reflections and Teachings of the Desert”

VINE AND BRANCHES

“I am the vine, you are the branches” (Jn 15:5)

In the year 1990, when Fatima Parish at San Isidro, iriga City where I was then the Parish Priest, produced a Yearbook, I used the theme of “Vine and Branches” as a conceptual framework for book. In that Yearbook, I compared the parish to a grape plant, complete with root, main trunk, leaves, fruits and branches.  My hypothesis then is that the parish is not merely an organization of people, with an organizational structure, but an organism, with a life of itself, like a plant:   “the plant which my Father planted” (Mt 15:13).

In this organism that we considered as the parish, we have an old and a new plant. The old plant is the old parish setup, with its old organizational structure. The new plant is the new parish setup with its local Christian communities, arranged like the rings of a tree trunk around the Holy Father at the center. As the communities in the parish grow big and mature, so does the plant, which is this parish, also grow big and mature.

What we did to have this new plant that are the Christian communities in the parish, was to insert these new communities, through a budding operation, into the old plant that is the old parish structure to make these communities grow and start a life. But once these budded branches are ready to start their own life apart from the old parish structure then they will be cut off and planted into a new site to start a new plant.

The above description of a parish as compared to the vine  and branches of a grape plant, is based on the gospel narrative which we have for this 5^th Sunday of Easter, which is Jesus Christ’s  parable about the Vine and Branches. Jesus said:

“I am the true vine^a and my Father is the vinedresser.Every branch in me that bears no fruit, ^bhe cuts away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes to make it bear even more. You are pruned^c already by means of the word that I have spoken to you. Make your home in me, as I make mine in you. As a branch cannot bear fruit all by itself, but must remain part of the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, with me in him, bears fruit in plenty; for cut off from me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me is like a branch that has been thrown away – he withers; these branches are collected and thrown on the fire. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask what you will and you shall get it. It is to the glory of my Father that you should bear much fruit, and then you shall be my disciples^d” (Jn 15:1-8).

Footnotes a, b, c, and d for this text are the following:

^a– On the vine image, cf. Jr 2:21; Is. 5:1+. In the synoptic, Jesus uses the vine as a symbol of the kingdom of God, Mt 20:1-8; 21:28-31, 33-41 and p, and ‘the fruit of the vine’ becomes the Eucharistic sacrament of the New Covenant, Mt 26:29p. Here he calls himself the true vine whose fruit, the true Israel, will not disappoint God’s expectation.

^b–The ‘fruit’ is that of a life of obedience to the commandments, especially that of love, vv. 12-17. Cf. is 5:7; Jr 2:21.

^c – The Greek word seems to be used here in its agricultural sense, but it may also mean “clean’ or “pure”, cf. 13:10.

^d–Var. ‘and so prove to be my disciples'. In this way the Father is ‘glorified in the Son’, 14:13. Cf. 21:19.

Jesus Christ’s parable on the Vine and Branches, especially verses 4-7 of today’s Gospel reading, points to us the importance and meaning of the word ‘union’, which is lavishly mentioned in today’s Second Reading taken from 1 John 3:18-24.

The First and Second Readings is common in reference to knowledge when they say:

Ac 9:30 - When the brothers knew, they took him to Caesaria, and sent him off from there to Tarsus.^o

1 Co 8:1 - Now about food sacrificed to idols, ‘We all have knowledge’; yes, that is so, but knowledge gives self-importance – it is love that makes the building grow.

1 Jn 3:20 - Whatever accusation it may raise against us, because God is greater than our conscience and he knows everything.ⁱ

The words of 1 Co. 8:1 that says, ‘it is love that makes the building grow’ points to the message of the Second Reading about love.