“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.”

This week’s gospel reading is taken from the middle of the Last Supper discourse. Jesus speaks about his relationship to his disciples. In his metaphor of the vine and the branches, Jesus is referencing the Hebrew Scriptures, in which Israel is the vineyard, and God himself tends the vineyard. Jesus uses the familiar image of the vine and the branches to teach us lessons about our Christian life. First of all, the image reminds us that God is the real owner of everything that we have and we are. He is the vine-grower. He does to us what he thinks is good and right. As disciples, we need to live our life as if we don’t own anything. We belong fully to God. We should not allow our selfishness and pride to make us think that we have absolute control over our lives. Rather, we always have to be open to God’s action, confident that he knows fully what is good for us.

Moreover, the image of the vine and the branches teaches us that Jesus is the source of our life and the point which connects us with one another. He is the vine and we are the branches. A branch cut off from the vine will wither and die. And so, it is with our life as disciples – we live fully and become fruitful only by remaining in Christ. In the gospel of John, the word “abide” appears at least thirty-seven times: “Abiding in God”, “abiding in Christ”, and “abiding in his Word”. We need to remain in Christ because apart from him, we can do nothing. We can’t bear fruit without Jesus. We can’t do anything in this world that God is calling us to do without Jesus. When we abide in Christ, we’re fed, lifted, and nourished so we can produce the fruit of Christian character, Christian conduct, and Christian converts.

Additionally, the image of the vine and the branches tells us that in order to stay healthy and fruitful we need pruning. Vine-growers know that the act of pruning is good for the branch. If the branch is not pruned for a long time, it becomes wild and produces no good grapes. Sometimes in our lives, God intervenes with the cross in order to challenge and make us grow. To take away our pride, sometimes God allows us to fail. To make us grow stronger in faith, sometimes God sends us trials and difficulties. Actually, we have to cut away some temporal things so eternal things can increase. We have to trim our lives of the superfluous so we can spend more time on eternal things that bear lasting fruit for God and for his kingdom. We can’t do this kind of pruning by ourselves. We need our heavenly gardener, to give us the strength and the will to want to change. We need the Holy Spirit to help us cut out the dead wood of sin and to grow beautiful fruit. That’s why it is ever so important that we are connected to the vine. From the vine, Jesus, we receive the nourishment we need to live as his disciples.

Let us bear much fruit. Let us be known for our love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Let us bear these fruits in the only way that we can: by abiding in Jesus. Especially, at every Holy Mass, we ask Christ to help us realize more and more the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit and the tremendous gift of Christ’s Body and Blood offered to us. With this help, we can place our hope not in results or success as the world understands, but in really belonging to Christ who sets us free and desires our happiness in the things that are really important: communion with God and eternal life.