Hello, I’m Jeff Cavins and today we’re looking at the readings for the Fifth Sunday in Easter. I love the readings for this week. It’s a very, very famous reading about Jesus being the vine and we are the branches, and I think that the key this week is understanding the intimate relationship that the branches have with the vine if they’re going to produce fruit.
Listen to this reading. “I am the true vine and my father is the vine dresser. Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes that it may bear more fruit.
You are already made clean by the word which I have spoken to you”—I love this, verse 4— “abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches.
He who abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” That one phrase there in verse five, “apart from me you can do nothing,” has been a verse in my life that has always brought me back to this question: Am I in Christ? Am I walking with Christ? Do I have a relationship with Christ or am I trying to do everything in my life on my own?
Take a look at the different areas of your life, your relationships, if you’re married, if you are a parent, your finances, your emotional state, being an employer, an employee. We can do nothing, really, that’s going to bear fruit if we are going to do it alone.
The beautiful thing about this text is that Jesus invites us into a relationship. He invites us into a level of intimacy that brings us to a place where our lives are actually sharing the same life as his. And that’s why we can bear fruit if we are taking from the nourishing vine of Jesus. Apart from Jesus, we don’t have anything that’s going to really bear fruit.
The second reading this week, I think, ties in beautifully in 1st John, chapter 3 where Jesus talks about—or John talks about—those who keep God’s commandments will abide in him. And so, part of abiding in Jesus is keeping his commandments. What kind of fruits are we looking for?
Well, John tells us in 1 John 3, “Love not in word or speech but in deed and truth. “The fruit that will develop from the relationship between the branches and the vine—ourselves and Jesus—will manifest in works that will bear fruit. Let’s go after that relationship.
Let’s say yes to the invitation. We know we can’t do anything without it.
Video Source
- Title: The Meaning of Jesus as the Vine
- Author: Jeff Cavins
- Source: YouTube: Sundays with Ascension
- Aired: April 26, 2018
- AscensionPress.com
Saint Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church 