Vine & Branches 

      In today’s Gospel reading, our Lord uses a rather picturesque metaphor to communicate to His followers (then and now) that the divine life from God flows into us (the branches) only in and through the vine itself (Christ).  Using this vivid and familiar image, Christ is reminding His followers of the source of that life – God – and that this life is transmitted to us through the “Vine” who is Christ.  Receiving that life from Him as branches receive the sap of vitality from the vine, we are then able to “bear much fruit” and so be His disciples.  Note well that this fruit is truly that of the branches, but only insofar as the branches remain attached to the vine; the fruit is the sign of remaining in Him.

      There are those, if they are not careful, who would miss the point of this simple illustration by beginning to presume that their bearing of “much fruit” is the means whereby the branch remains on the vine; but actually it’s the other way around:  the exhortation is not first and foremost to bear fruit, but rather to remain in Christ, the source of life that moves us and enables us to bear much fruit – a Christian’s life more and more changed after the image of our Lord,  a life of faith, hope and love, a life of joy and peace and good works.  Fruit. 

      Nevertheless, there is something really wrong with a branch that does not bear fruit; somehow it is no longer drawing life from the vine.  And so it is removed and thrown away.  Fruit is the inevitable sign and blossoming forth of a life that is really there; without that life and its fruit – and thus the challenge to remain a branch attached to the vine – there is only futility and death.  And even the healthy, fruit-bearing branches are “pruned”; that is, made ever more effective branches for receiving life from the vine, a reminder of the discipline of the Christian life.

      This is important, because someone could easily begin to think that his “work” of bearing fruit is the means of receiving God’s life, when in fact that means or facility is not our work but rather God’s grace.  And Christ is the One who transmits it to us.  The Church has much to say about God’s grace, but simply put, it is God’s gift of the means whereby one participates in His divine life.  That grace has to be given before we can even become the “branches” on this “vine” who is Christ.

      Thus our Lord’s exhortation to remain in Him; otherwise, we cut ourselves off from the means of grace.  So the emphasis is certainly not on running around doing things that we can then label as “fruit,” but rather to first and foremost be in relationship with Christ, a relationship of faith, hope and love, the “fuel” for which is grace.  This truth is encapsulated in the Thomas Aquinas’ oft-repeated principle – a basic principle of the natural as well as the supernatural – agere sequitur esse, “doing follows being.” 

      Of course, God’s grace is provided for both the being and the doing, both the being of a Christian and the doing of a Christian.  This is often expressed with two words that describe these two aspects of the Christian life – contemplation and action; but priority is given the former, and the distinction between the two is illustrated in the Gospel account of Mary and Martha, the first choosing the contemplative and the latter mistakenly trying to make the active primary. 

      But there is something to be done:  we must “remain” in Christ; we must, that is, enact and live, by God’s empowering grace, what we already are, Christians united to Christ.  For the Catholic, how to “do” this is easily and objectively grasped; for Christians without the proper understanding of the Church, it is much more difficult.  For the Church, as she has taught for two thousand years, is the very extension of the Vine who is Christ into the world; she is His body, to be a member of which is to be truly attached to Him.  Thus, we see the true nature of the Sacraments, flowing from Christ, who instituted them, as the means whereby His life flows into us. 

      There is also, then, that “doing” that is involved in the bearing of fruit.  The power, the life – the grace – is there, but we must engage it, say yes to it and act on it, after the manner of Our Lady’s fiat:  she who was uniquely graced from the moment of her conception, who prayed and waited patiently for God’s word to come to her, who, when she received it, said “yes,” and immediately acted on it by hurrying to the help of her cousin Elizabeth in her time of pregnancy with John the Baptist.  This is the pattern, the model, of the whole Christian life.  It is, indeed, the Catholic way, always giving primacy to grace, to being, and saying “yes” to God’s gift of Himself to us, and then, moved and enabled by that grace, to express it in the fruit that is born in our lives, that “much fruit” that is the outward sign of God’s life within us.