It is hard to believe that we are more than half way through the Easter season now, as today we celebrate the 5th Sunday of Easter. In three weeks, on May 19, we will commemorate the end of the Easter season with our celebration of Pentecost. The readings we have throughout the Easter season help us reflect upon the presence of the resurrected Lord that is with us and the impact that presence has on our lives. As I thought about our Gospel today, about Jesus being the vine that connects us together as his disciples in the new life we have in him, I thought I would share three objects that spoke to me about today’s Gospel. The first is this branch that comes from Pope Francis’ home country of Argentina. One of my parishioners from Yazoo City brought me this back from a visit to her daughter when she was working for an oil company in Buenos Aires. It looks like an ordinary branch on the one side, but then you flip it over, you see that it is carved into a crucifix from its natural shape as a branch, that it is Jesus on the cross. I thought of this branch when I read today's Gospel. The other item is this walking stick. Back when I was ministering at the state prison in Pearl in 2011, I met a Catholic inmate from the coast who had just been sentenced to a 30 year term and who was in Pearl for processing. I only met him one time before he was shipped out to the prison on the Gulf Coast. We started a correspondence through letters. Back more than 10 years ago, I wrote to him about about an upcoming pilgrimage I was going to take to Spain on the Camino of St James. Several weeks later, I received a package that his wife had sent. Contained in the package was this walking stick that he had carved from a holly tree on his property. He used the stick to go hiking with his son. He wanted me to have this stick for my hikes and for my pilgrimage. The third item I want to show is a cross that one of my parishioners from Yazoo City made for me from one of the trees on her property. Lena Mae died some years ago, but I think of her when I see this cross hanging on the wall of my rectory. On the back it has inscribed that she gave it to me on Thanksgiving day of 2011. Like the way we are connected with Jesus through as a vine is connected to the different branches, I feel connected to these three wooden object in different ways. The remind me of the lesson of interconnectedness in this parable.
Our connectedness with Jesus in his explanation of the vines and the branches speaks to us today, just as does the reading about the evangelization of the Early Church from the Acts of the Apostles. In the stories of the Early Church in the Easter season readings, we hear about the first evangelization that took place after Christ’s death and resurrection. Why was this evangelization so successful? Why did the Church have converts from the different corners of the Roman Empire? Paul and Barnabas and that original group of disciples were on fire with the word of God permeating their lives. They were filled with joy and enthusiasm to share their faith with others. They wanted to proclaim the Good News to all the world, not letting any obstacles or challenges stand in their way. Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis see us called to a new evangelization that is in the spirit of Paul and the members of the Early Church, an evangelization that will energize our own faith and to those to whom we bring the Gospel message. Benedict and Francis have made this message of the new evangelization an important part of their preaching to the world. Pope Francis has proclaimed that the spread of the Gospel is not guaranteed by the number of persons, or by the prestige of the institution, or by the quantity of available resources. According to Pope Francis, what counts is that we be permeated by the love of Christ, that we let ourselves be led by the Holy Spirit and that we graft our own lives onto the tree of life, the cross of Jesus. We are called to be a part of the vine and the branches that connect us to Jesus as his disciples.
One book that has made an impact on me is a book entitled REBUILT. It talks about Nativity parish in suburban Baltimore, about the process this parish went through to reenergize and revitalize its community of faith. The subtitle of the book is Awakening the Faithful, Reaching the Lost, and Making Church matter. The authors of this book see the movement of the Kingdom of God as a movement of love. Ultimately, as modern-day Christians, we are to help restore God’s reign of love. We won’t see God's reign, we will miss it, unless we serve one another. Pope Benedict XVI, in his encyclical DEUS CARITAS EST (God is Love) states: “Only if I serve my neighbor can my eyes to opened to what God does for me and how he loves me.” Pope Benedict mentions that the saints, such as Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, constantly renewed their capacity to love their neighbor through their encounter with Christ in Eucharist. This Eucharistic encounter took on more realism and depth through the way they served their neighbor. Thus, love of God and love of neighbor are inseparable in our faith. Serving others out of our faith is more than caring about another’s need. It is about recognizing the image of God in others through our service, about allowing our service to open our eyes to God and to fall more deeply in love with him.
Just as the image of Jesus the Good Shepherd spoke to us in a very real way in last Sunday’s Gospel, the parable of the vine and the branch speaks to us in ways that we can understand. How are we are part of the vine and the branches her in our parishes of Holy Savior and Immaculate Conception? How are we reaching out to others and collaborating in order to build up the Body of Christ?
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