GOSPEL REFLECTION, WEDNESDAY, 5TH WEEK OF EASTER, 1 MAY 2024

John 15:1-8.  In today’s gospel reading, Jesus gave his disciples the seventh and last of the great “I AM” sayings in John’s gospel: “I AM the true vine, and my Father is the winegrower.”  He gave them a wonderful image of organic life to describe what they were each other, and most importantly of what they were in relation to himself and to the Father.  Being in Christ, they were a great, growing, life-filled vine.  The Father is the vine-grower who keeps the vine in its best condition.  He tends the vine so that it bears fruit abundantly, and so the vine is a marvellous image of the Kingdom.  The Father trims away any dead wood branches lest they cause decay and waste of energy within the vine, a sharp image of judgement.  If we become like dead branches then we have closed ourselves off from the life-giving nourishment of Jesus, who is the vine.  Jesus, in himself, is our source of life.  Jesus says to his followers, ‘abide in me and I will abide in you just as I abide in the Father and the Father in me’ (vv. 4, 7).  ‘We belong together, fully present to each other.’  We sometimes tend to make this parable about ourselves, the individual branches which either thrive on the vine or are pruned away.  This can be partly the effect of the secular society around us which for some time has encouraged in us a habitual individualism.  But make no mistake, this parable is about the whole vine, the whole organic mass of life from root to branch, Jesus in himself, for he is our Kingdom – he is the The Vine, in which we share his life and our life together as his disciples.