May the joyful light of the resurrection lift you up!
Easter season is an amazing time of grace and transformation for the Church around the world. As we progress through the season, we learn more about Jesus and our relationship with God in him. Last weekend Jesus described himself as the Good Shepherd because he leads, protects and provides for all our needs. This image was a favorite among early Christians because it spoke of the Church’s dependency on God and God’s ever-present care for all his people. Culturally they understood the symbiotic relationship that it presented. This weekend, we hear Jesus describe our connection and dependency on God in another image from nature: the Vine and the Branches! Jesus is an amazing teacher!
Jesus’ message is clear and easy to grasp. God is the source of all life, love, knowledge, truth, peace, and all things that we recognize as good. God is life-giving! Being connected to God is life and not being connected to God is death. God is the root and the trunk and the sap that flows through the vine branches. The branches are the Church, the community and individuals that make up the Church. This image from Jesus is open to a variety of ways of understanding how greatly everyone and everything needs God. For us whom God identifies as his own people, a holy nation, a priestly and prophetic people, the image of the vine and the branch reminds us of who we are and how greatly we depend on the community of believers and the sacraments of the Church. Baptism grafts us into the life-flowing sap of the Holy Trinity and fills us with the very life of God in the Holy Spirit. To turn away from that, to choose sin or to remain willfully in a pattern of behavior that rejects God and the teaching of the Church is spiritual death. It is to reject the life in Christ that we are called to. Jesus came so that we might have life and have it more abundantly! It is a life of joy-filled hope and salvation. This is what it is to live the faith and participate in the sacraments.
May God enrich you with all that is good! +++ Fr. Peter