Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter

I am the true vine and you are the branches….

In the Holy Eucharist, Christ our True Vine firmly unites us to Himself. His lifeblood flows through our veins; He unites our flesh to His in a firm bond of love.

Fifth Sunday of Easter – Year B

I am the true vine and my Father is the vine grower. He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit. The act of taking away or removing a branch and the act of pruning are basically the same type of action. In both removing and pruning, one cuts away what is not necessary. Only the outcome is different. With one the entire branch is removed, while pruning enables a branch to grow again and this time more abundantly. The only real difference between removal and pruning is not in the action of the vine grower but in the quality of the branch. A barren branch gets taken away. A fruitful branch gets pruned. In fact, the removal of the dead branches is an essential part of the pruning of the fruitful branches.

Now, before you start to think that we’re here this Sunday for a lesson in vine dressing, (about which I know practically nothing!) I think this insight can help us understand our Lord’s words in today’s Gospel: I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever remains in Me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither, people will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned. The sufferings that come our way in this life, the opportunities the Lord sends us to die to self each and every day, can be for us either a cutting away completely or a pruning. Neither pruning nor cutting away is a pleasant process to have to undergo. We can allow our sufferings to cut us off from the Lord, which would be removal; or we can allow them to attach us more firmly to the Vine, which would be pruning us clean in order that we might bear fruit more abundantly, fruit that will last. Again, the difference lies, not in the action of the vine grower, but in the quality of the branch: whether it is a barren branch or a fruitful one. St Louis de Montfort, whose feast is today, April 28th, once said: “Take advantage of little sufferings even more than of great ones. God considers not so much what we suffer as how we suffer. . . Turn everything to profit as the grocer does in his shop.”

To use another image, we can allow the sufferings of this life either to conform us more closely to the Cross of Christ or to harden our hearts, dry us up, make us fit for nothing but being thrown on the fire. St John Paul II, who took his episcopal motto of Totus tuus from de Montfort’s writings and who throughout his life knew firsthand the reality of human suffering, once wrote: “[The human person] suffers in different ways, ways not always considered by medicine, not even in its most advanced specializations. Suffering is something which is still wider than sickness, more complex and at the same time still more deeply rooted in humanity itself. A certain idea of this problem comes to us from the distinction between physical suffering and moral suffering. This distinction is based upon the double dimension of the human being and indicates the bodily and spiritual element as the immediate or direct subject of suffering. Insofar as the words "suffering" and "pain", can, up to a certain degree, be used as synonyms, physical suffering is present when "the body is hurting" in some way, whereas moral suffering is "pain of the soul". In fact, it is a question of pain of a spiritual nature, and not only of the "psychological" dimension of pain which accompanies both moral and physical suffering. The vastness and the many forms of moral suffering are certainly no less in number than the forms of physical suffering. But at the same time, moral suffering seems as it were less identified and less reachable by therapy.”

I used to see this all the time when I worked as a hospital chaplain. Some of the patients I would meet, their sickness, their sufferings brought forth from them all the best and noblest qualities of a human being. Yet for others, all they could feel was how unfair the whole thing was, how unjust that they had to suffer like this. Now what I am advocating here is not the “Power of Positive Thinking”, like the late Rev. Norman Vincent Peale. Nor am I espousing the principles of Christian Science, as taught by the late Mary Baker Eddy. I am not saying that it is all in your mind, that it is up to you whether your sufferings will crush you or not, depending on your attitude. No, the difference is in the quality of the branch. Barren branches are cut away; fruitful branches get pruned to increase their yield.

And you and I are fruitful branches when we remain firmly clinging to Christ our True Vine; when we can say with St. Paul, “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.” And here in the Holy Eucharist, Christ our True Vine firmly unites us to Himself. His lifeblood flows through our veins; He unites our flesh to His in a firm bond of love. “Without Me you can do nothing.” I am the true vine and my Father is the vine grower. He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and every one that does he prunes so it bears more fruit.

Amen.