The previous Sunday’s Good Shepherd theme has allowed us to
see Christ as our caring leader and companion who is ever ready to sacrifice
all for our sake. But today’s image of the vine and branches brings us to an
awareness of an even more profound level of relationship between us and the
Lord. Christ is not just a leader or a companion, He is our very life. He is the vine and we, his disciples, are the
branches. This reveals the intimate
union we have with Christ and, through him, with the Father. We share the one and the same Spirit-life
with the Risen Lord. We are so united
with him that we cannot live, we cannot do anything fruitful apart from him much
as a branch withers and unable to bear fruits when cut off from the vine.
Hence, today’s gospel (Jn 15: 1-8) invites us to remain with
the Lord: “Remain in me, as I remain in you. 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” (v. 4).
Remaining in the Lord means cultivating our intimate
relationship with him and nurturing the very life we have with him. One aspect of the imagery of the vine that
suggests the necessity of nurturing this intimacy is the art of pruning. The
vine grower, that is, the Father, takes away every branch that does not bear
fruit, and “everyone that does, he prunes so that it bears more fruit” (v. 2).
Let us then look into this aspect of pruning as an art of
spiritual nurturance. May I suggest, as
an insight, three ways of appraising our experiences of being pruned. We may understand this spiritual pruning as a
process of purification, a process of discernment, and a process toward
surrendering.
Pruning as a process
of purification. We are always in need of purification. The more intimate
we become with the Lord, the more we need to be purified from the habits of
sin. Sin and divine life cannot co-exist.
When we allow our habits of sin to persist in us, these habits undermine
our intimacy with the Lord. Our capacity to bear much fruit is diminished.
Hence, we need to submit ourselves to pruning.
We need to be constantly purified from our sins so that we are always
disposed to the life-giving grace of God.
When we are freed from sin, God remains in us and we remain in Him. This
strengthens our intimacy with the Lord.
“You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to
you” (v. 3). This reminds us that Jesus’
word purifies us. As an art of pruning,
then, we are invited to immerse ourselves always in the word of Jesus by
reading the scriptures, reflecting on it, praying with it, and acting upon it. His
word reflected and prayed upon purifies our day-to-day intentions and conforms
our being and doing with that of God.
What are the habits of sin that hamper my intimacy with the
Lord? Can I allow the word of God to purify me every day and hence nurture my
intimacy with Him?
Pruning as process of
discernment. Oftentimes we are not
bearing much fruit because we are not primarily concerned with what is
essential. We are distracted by too much
worldly cares. We are bombarded with many choices each day from the most
trivial things to the profoundest options. Most of the time we don’t discern;
we just embrace uncritically just anything that is attractively presented to us
and hence spend our time, talent, treasure, energy, and life pursuing concerns
of this world aimlessly. The result of
this disoriented pursuit is emptiness.
No fruits.
We need to trim down our concerns and discern what is essential
from the passing fancies of this secular society. Pruning may be seen as discerning our purpose
as Christ’s disciples. Amid this growing
secularized or “Godless” society, Christ’s disciples are called to remain in
him. In the language of the second reading (1 Jn 3: 18-24), to remain in the
Lord is to believe in him and to keep his commandment: “We should believe in
the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another just as he commanded us”
(v. 23). For us disciples of the Lord, what is essential is that which brings
growth in faith and in our love for one another. And this is particularly what’s dying in our
communities with the onslaught of secularism. Hence, we need to be pruned by
our discernment of our essential purpose. Is the Lord with me in what I do now in life? Or
Am I in the Lord as I do what I do in life?
Pruning as a process
toward surrendering to God. When we
live in our habits of sin compounded by the Godless culture around us, it is
not surprising that this Godlessness may characterize our lifestyle. Meaning,
sin and worldly cares become our way of being. They become so much a part of us
that we begin to resist any invitation to change. Or sometimes we are still
aware of God’s presence in our life but we have grown satisfied and complacent
in our comfort zones. We definitely need
pruning to shake off these attachments.
Sometimes, what awakens us is a tremendous experience of pain, like the
experience of failure, of great loss, of serious health problem, etc.
God allows these painful experiences to happen not as
punishment but as a powerful intervention to bring us back to him. When we are
confronted with the fact of losing everything we believed to be important to
us, we either wallow in despair and anger or, with the last ounce of faith, we
cling to God and humbly submit. I
believe our experiences of loss are graced moments meant to enable us see
clearly that apart from God we are nothing. Our experiences of loss are invitation
to move on with hope for a new beginning of a much fruitful life with God. We
need to surrender and remain in God.
May our experiences of being pruned nurture our intimacy
with God and our fruits give glory to his name: “By this is my Father
glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples” (v. 8).
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