Today’s theme is rootedness. It flows from this mechanism set up by the Lord for the self-communication of His True, Real and Substantial Presence to us.
If last week Jesus spoke of Himself as the Shepherd who lays down His life for His sheep, then this Sunday, He characterises Himself as the True Vine. Like the title Good Shepherd, this self-description is not entirely new either. Israel in the Old Testament was looked upon as the choice vine that God had planted. It is in contrast to this “diseased or degenerate” vine that Jesus is the True Vine. Israel for all its lush verdant thriving was a vine that could not bear fruit whereas Jesus is the Vine from which branches attached to it will bear fruit in plenty.
The implication of this rooted and penetrating relationship with Him is that the fruit will be evangelical in expression. Encounter with Christ is missionary in nature. We witness the bounty of this deepened relationship in none other than the example of St Paul in the 1st Reading. Once converted to Christ, he transformed from persecutor to preacher. Thus, John in the 2nd Reading, reads this belonging to Jesus in terms of loving in deeds and in truth and not only in words. Accordingly, the measure of our love is that we begin to love without measure.
Therefore, it remains vital that we be grafted to Him in order to draw our nourishment essential for the conversion of love to take place. Those who cut themselves off are in danger of being gathered to be burnt. As our loving fruitfulness is measured by being attached to Jesus, one of the invocations for the Penitential Rite provides a practical illustration of what this affiliation consists of. “You come in Word and Sacrament to strengthen us and to make us holy”. Concretely, our link to Jesus is both spiritual and substantial because He feeds us through the Liturgy of the Word and nourishes us in the Liturgy of the Eucharist. Here, we are brought back to the centrality that the Eucharistic Liturgy plays in strengthening our connexion with Him. The Eucharist is the lifeline of Christ the True Vine to us.
This image of being grafted unto Him may be picture perfect but it carries with it the possibility of pruning in order that we produce an abundant harvest. In the Gospel, Christ is pointed out as the Vine which makes the Father the Vinedresser. Perhaps this is where we may face a rude awakening especially if our idea of relationship is one that is based on entitlement.
This sense of privilege and compensation debases our relationship with God to the mere plane of the material. At this level, we think of God in terms of benevolence or blessing. Blinded by worldly affluence, we tend to forget that God’s mercy is also just.1 In other words, we want a God who is kindness towards us. His kindness is basically expressed as generosity of blessings. But, if we are not caught up with abundance as the measure of wealth, then our concept of benevolence is tilted towards health as if nothing adverse should ever happen to us. Here St Bernadette Soubirous is the perfect saint to disabuse us of this kind of “relationship” with the Lord or rather the lack of.
She of all people was denied the healing properties of the waters of Lourdes. If our sense of blessing is narrowly defined by material well-being, then we should be upset by this “meaningless, needless or senseless” cruelty. How can God, who through her gave the world a shrine dedicated to wholesome health, deny her its benefits? In fact, this question about God’s incomprehensibility is heard million times over every day. “How can a good God allow this to happen?”, is a mantra commonly mouthed. But Bernadette did not see it that way. She simply bore her illness as part of her purification—through it, she saw sanctification. Today she is a saint precisely because her attachment to Christ did not shield her from the pruning needed for perfection. On the contrary, her very association with Christ was put through the test of a debilitating illness.
We need to get out of this thinking that God requires little of us. Beyond our sense of entitlement lies a danger and it is an idea that is embraced by some. It is the notion of “practical universalism”. Its tenets include an assumption that the road to heaven is broad and wide, almost, if not everyone, is going in that direction. It also holds that narrow is the path to hell and hardly anyone, ever, reaches there. Such a universalism runs counter to Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel (Mt 7: 13-14) where He Himself declared that the road to hell is broad and wide. Many are headed for destruction whereas the path to heaven is straight and narrow. Few find themselves struggling along the way.2 On Easter Sunday, mention was made of the idea of “cheap grace” amongst which is the expression “baptism without repentance is grace without discipleship and the Cross”. It should not surprise us that as long as we draw life from the Vine, there will be pruning, and thus purification. We may not fully comprehend why God would even allow evil to touch us but through faith, we trust in God’s profound wisdom and love for us. He allows suffering to touch us, so that dependent entirely on Him, we may bear the fruit necessary for our salvation and the salvation of the world.
This kind of faith despite all the challenges we face can only be sustained by a relationship with Jesus the Lord who feeds us through His Word and His Sacrament. The consumption of His Body and Blood is as real as we can get in terms of drawing nourishment from the True Vine. We may not be able to do what St Paul did—preach to half of the known world then. But if St John’s injunction were to make any sense, loving in deed and in truth is going to be as good as what St Paul did. We preach through our love and witness through our actions. This is where we can excel as individual Christians. Drawing strength from the spiritual and substantial sustenance of Christ, we serve the world by engaging in our family, our neighbourhoods, and our county. God knows how sorely this country needs in terms of actions which are honourable and honest. Christians who embrace values of integrity are important to the right formation of society.
As St Augustine commenting on the 1st Letter of St John says, “Love and do what you will”. It does not have to big or spectacular but it has to begin with me. Just being a good citizen is a great start. As Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world”. It is possible because Jesus is precisely the food for this endeavour.
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1 Mercy and Justice are complementary. True justice incorporates mercy and true mercy cannot exist without justice. Thus, God’s mercy is always just, and His justice is always merciful. According to St Thomas Aquinas, mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution as it is indulgent. Justice without mercy is cruelty.
2 This is the absolute claim by Christ Himself that He is the source of salvation, which also grounds the assertion that He is THE way and not just one amongst many ways. He is THE truth and not just any kind of truth. He is THE life and not just any life. For many, this is problematic, especially if the unquestioned assumption is that everyone WILL be saved. Yes, God may will the salvation of all. But it remains the case that at most, some will be saved because the branches have to be attached to the Vine. We should not presume because it requires that we acknowledge the need for salvation. We cannot presume that people are inculpably ignorant meaning that they are not responsible for their ignorance of Jesus Christ. There are people who truly do not know Christ through no fault of their own. . But there are also people who hate Him. That is not inculpable ignorance. A person who actively hates Jesus cannot be saved. Such a statement sounds painfully abhorrent to ears shaped by “practical universalism” because, for all intents and purposes, “universalism” has a tendency to paper over what is particular or what it considers to be an aberration to its presumptuous parameters. It does not tolerate “difference” because this uncomfortable but real difference destroys its deluded grandeur of unity. The possibility of salvation for those who are not baptised (not attached to Christ for whatever reasons) is hinged on three conditions. Firstly, inculpable ignorance. This is ignorance through no fault of the person. Secondly, sincere seeking for God. One seeks God because Man has been created for God and as such, he searches for Him. Here we encounter the danger of indifference. In Noah’s time, the people were living as if there were no danger of damnation, right until the flood swept them off the face of the earth. Jesus Himself predicted that man will be buying and selling until the day He returns. Such indifference to eternity has a price. Finally, the third condition is our conscience. Newman characterises the conscience as the aboriginal Vicar of Christ. Whilst that is true, what is also true is that our conscience can also be corrupted, misinformed and subsequently malformed. The onus is on us to form our conscience clearly. And conscience is definitely not “What I feel is right is right”.
