Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament

Fifth Sunday in Eastertide - May 10, 2009 - Blessed Sacrament

The homilies and other commentaries that the Fathers of the Church and medieval theologians wrote about the Scriptures often contain insights to nourish thought and love that are not found in more modern commentaries, especially if, as too often happens, these restrict their attention to historical questions. The latter can be very helpful to the reader, or to the preacher, and I ususally consult them in preparing a homily. Sometimes an historical reconstruction prompts a line of thought to develop, but sometimes they leave one back in the first century, or even earlier, in the history of Israel, when the whole point of reading, or preaching, the Bible as the word of life is to explore what a passage means for today, means for me, means for you, means for us, the Church. And for this, I often find that the way the Bible was read and interpreted for most of Christian history, before the rise of historical criticism in the nineteenth century, has more to offer the reader, or the preacher.

So I read St. Thomas’s thoughts about the passage from John’s Gospel that we heard today, in which Jesus says: “I am the true vine, and my father is the vine-grower.... I am the vine, and you are the branches.” St. Thomas was an Italian, born in a little town in the countryside, and we can be sure that he knew about vines, an everyday knowledge he does not hesitate to use in explaining the text. So this is a first insight he offers: “A vine, even though it is looked down upon, exceeds all other woods in the sweetness of its fruit, just as Christ, even though the world looked down upon him because he was poor and seemed of no worth and bore disgrace, nonetheless produced the sweetest of fruits... And thus Christ is the vine that brings a wine that stings us with remorse, makes us drunk inside, and strengthens us, as wine does at a meal.”

But, Aquinas went on, Christ called himself “the true vine,” in contrast to something that’s not real vine, just as wine that’s gone bad is called vinegar, not real wine. And to find that contrast, Aquinas could remember that both Jeremiah and Isaiah had used the metaphor of the vine to refer to Israel and God’s care of it and of his disappointed expectations: “I planted you as a chosen vineyard, all true seed,” says the Lord in Jeremiah (2:21); how, then, have you turned into something bitter, strange vine?” The Lord planted and cared for his vine, Isaiah says (5:1-5), but he must complain: “What more could I have done for my vineyard that I have not done, and why is it that when I looked for grapes from it, I found only the tasteless grapes that grow in the wild?” Christ, on the other hand, is a true vine, a real vine, because he has produced the grapes, the sweet fruit, that God was looking for.

And Aquinas knew what it meant for a vine to be tended, how dead branches need to be cut off, and healthy vines to be pruned of many of the shoots that develop so that the sap will be concentrated in fewer of them and produce more grapes–a metaphor for the difficulties and trials God permits us to suffer in order to concentrate our attention and our affections so that we can be more fruitful. And, above all, he knew what it meant to remain on the vine: “Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me... Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.” We have to remain in Christ for the same reason that the branch cannot bear grapes unless the sap rises from the root into the branches and the leaves.

But at some point, I suppose, we have to leave metaphors and ask what this means. The vine and branches metaphor expresses our union with Christ and our need to remain in him if we are to stay alive and to bear any kind of fruit worthy of God. But a vine and its branches are not conscious, and neither is the sap that rises from the roots and spreads to make the vine produce grapes. So what can these metaphors mean for us conscious human beings, in our relationship with God and with Christ. We have to translate the language into insights appropriate to creatures God had made intelligent and free, whom he wishes to come to him precisely by the exercise of our intelligence and freedom. We are in Christ when we believe in him, when we resolve to follow him, when we love what he loves and as he loves. To be united to Christ, to remain in him, is to see the world as he sees it, to love as he loves, to love in response to his love. We are in him in virtue of his love; he is in us in virtue of the love the Spirit enables in us. It is his love, of course, that initiates this relationship, that is the deep root from which God’s love, like sap, spreads through all of us, making us alive and green and fruitful in our own love. Love is the sap of this vine, and we cut ourselves off from Christ when we do not allow his love to flow in us, when we turn aside from his love, when we produce something other than love. The fruit God wants from us is a life lived in imitation of Christ. Anything other will disappoint God as much as did Israel’s wild, tasteless grapes.

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