Remaining in Jesus, Fifth Wednesday of Easter, May 5, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Easter
May 5, 2021
Acts 15:1-6, Ps 122, Jn 15:1-8

To listen to today’s homily, please click below: 

• Today in the Acts of the Apostles, we come to one of the most pivotal events not only in the history of the early Church but the history of the Church, period. It’s the Council of Jerusalem, the first such Council in the history of the Church. It came about because “there arose no little dissension and debate” after some Christians coming from Judea were telling the Gentile Christians in Antioch, “Unless you are circumcised according to the Mosaic practice, you cannot be saved.” The question was far broader than merely of circumcision, but about the ground of salvation, the way we relate to God, the role of the Mosaic law in the faith and the manner in which Jewish and Gentile Christians were to behave with regard to each other. So Paul, Barnabas and others went up to Jerusalem to confer with the apostles and priests about it.
• St. Paul was once a Pharisee and believed that salvation happened through rigid observance of the Mosaic Law in all its details. But after he was converted on the road to Damascus, converted from a false notion of the holy life to a true one, he began to see that one is saved by Christ and not by our own actions obeying all 613 commands and all the other precepts of the Mosaic law. We’re saved by God’s mercy rather than by our merit. He would spend most of his apostolic life proclaiming this truth. He wrote two letters (one to the Romans and another to the Galatians) explaining in detail how Christ, rather than the law, is our Savior, and he spent parts of two other letters (Colossians and Philippians) talking about how baptism rather than circumcision enters us into the life of faith and the Covenant with God. He brought all of these inspirations to the Council in Jerusalem and we’ll see later how the Holy Spirit led the early Church to the solution with regard to the Gentiles.
• We learn in this scene two essential truths. First that we’re saved by God’s action to which we freely respond, not principally by our own action. The Mosaic law functions to help us prepare to receive the fullness of that saving action in Christ, when he comes to bring us fully into communion with God through his passion, death and resurrection and through the sacraments he instituted so that we might enter into his life. Second, we learn how to relate to each other. One of the reasons why this dispute between Jews and Gentiles was such a big deal was not simply the question of whether Gentiles needed to be good Jews before they could be good Christians, but it was because stricter Jews, like the Pharisees, had no interaction with Gentiles. They avoided them as if they were lepers. They didn’t eat with them. They didn’t enter into their houses. That was the background as to why the Hellenist widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of the bread, because many of the Jewish Christians would just keep their cultural tradition of complete separation. That obviously couldn’t work in the communion of the Church. The Council of Jerusalem was crucial so that Christians would live in communion with each other, which is what Jesus intended from the beginning, that we would be one as he and the Father is one.
• And that brings us to the Gospel, where Jesus gives us the powerful and beautiful image of the Vine and the Branches, which is an image of the type of unity we’re all supposed to have in Jesus, an image of how our works are supposed to flow from our saving bond with him rather than detached from him and his redeeming grace, and an image of how we’re supposed to be in communion with the other Branches on the Vine. Over the course of Jesus’ Holy Thursday instructions to the disciples, he’s already called us to a union of love, telling us to remain in his love by keeping his commandments and remaining in his word. He’s told us our union with him should be so profound that who ever receives us receives him, because who ever receives us should be receiving us-in-communion-with-Christ-who-is-himself-in-communion-with-the-Father. Today Jesus points not just to a moral union but to a spiritually ontological union that precedes and is coupled to it. This union is the essence of the Christian life. We enter into an interpersonal communion with the Lord that flows out into deeds. How beautiful is this reality that Jesus wills! And as we attach ourselves to Christ the Vine as his branches, as God’s life flows from the Vine into us the branches, we recognize that we are connected to each other precisely in Christ the Vine. As he remains in us and we remain in him — which is something we must will and choose, something to which we must say fiat — we remain in communion with each other. We bear fruit in communion with him and in his body the Church. This is the way he says, somewhat shockingly, at the end of today’s passage that we will “become” his disciples. We’re not disciples if we merely know what he’s taught or simply follow him on the outside. We become disciples when we unite ourselves to him on the inside and through, with and in him with each other. If we become disciples in this way, united with Jesus and with other branches on the Vine, that is what will glorify the Father. All of us who together with Jesus love the Father must therefore want this type of mutual inter-abiding.
• Jesus said all of these words about the Vine and the Branches on Holy Thursday and there’s a reason for that, because it’s on Holy Thursday as Jesus gave us his Body and Blood for the first time so that we could enter into the Holy Communion with him to which the image of the vine and branches points. When I was a seminarian at the North American College in Rome, the chapel had an interesting marble pattern on the floor. At first it seemed a little strange, but when you began to notice the intercalated dark and lighter marble, the pattern began to make sense. It was supposed to put into marble Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel. The marble in the sanctuary, all around the altar, was dark grape colored (I’m color blind so I won’t make a mistake by guessing what color it was!) and that dark grape color, after coming down the stairs, was interspersed with white marble, to show how all of us in the pews become branches on the Vine through the Mass. In the Mass we attached ourselves through the “transubstantiated fruit of the vine,” through Christ’s Body and Blood, and in that communion, enter into a bond with others far greater than blood. Jesus in Holy Communion is the source of our unity, for which the early Church worked so hard. This is the source of our salvation. This is the summit of the law, as we fulfill Jesus’ words to do this in his memory. And our praying this united with Jesus and truly united through, with, and in him to each other is the Father’s supreme glory! As we enter more deeply into this mystery of the Vine and the Branches, let us pray that we may abide in Christ so much that we might bear fruit always for the Father’s glory and come at last, together with each other and with all the saints, to abide in God forever.

Reading 1
ACTS 15:1-6

Some who had come down from Judea were instructing the brothers,
“Unless you are circumcised according to the Mosaic practice,
you cannot be saved.”
Because there arose no little dissension and debate
by Paul and Barnabas with them,
it was decided that Paul, Barnabas, and some of the others
should go up to Jerusalem to the Apostles and presbyters
about this question.
They were sent on their journey by the Church,
and passed through Phoenicia and Samaria
telling of the conversion of the Gentiles,
and brought great joy to all the brethren.
When they arrived in Jerusalem,
they were welcomed by the Church,
as well as by the Apostles and the presbyters,
and they reported what God had done with them.
But some from the party of the Pharisees who had become believers
stood up and said, “It is necessary to circumcise them
and direct them to observe the Mosaic law.”

The Apostles and the presbyters met together to see about this matter.

Responsorial Psalm
PS 122:1-2, 3-4AB, 4CD-5

R. (see 1)  Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
I rejoiced because they said to me,
“We will go up to the house of the LORD.”
And now we have set foot
within your gates, O Jerusalem.
R. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Jerusalem, built as a city
with compact unity.
To it the tribes go up,
the tribes of the LORD.
R. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
According to the decree for Israel,
to give thanks to the name of the LORD.
In it are set up judgment seats,
seats for the house of David.
R. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.

Gospel
JN 15:1-8

Jesus said to his disciples:
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.
He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit,
and everyone that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit.
You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.
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.
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.
Anyone who does not remain in me
will be thrown out like a branch and wither;
people will gather them and throw them into a fire
and they will be burned.
If you remain in me and my words remain in you,
ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.
By this is my Father glorified,
that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”

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