Wednesday May 17
Again we go to the top floor of a house in Jerusalem where, at sunset, we hear how Jesus said farewell to his disciples. Twice was used the same image the Old Testament applies to Israel: the true vine. To this vine are attached like branches all who believe in him. And precisely, they bear fruit because they are in communion of faith and love with him, otherwise they are just dry branches that are pruned and thrown into the fire. Jesus speaks of a painful purification as necessary but only through this will the disciple bear fruit and glorify God.
Alternative
Does society exist for the benefit of its members, as Herbert Spencer believed, or the members for the benefit of society? If you say the first, you seem to be setting the stage for complete individualism; but if you say the second are you not sponsoring fascism? So which is it going to be?
We spontaneously assume that questions are perfectly clear and correctly put, and that only answers can be true or false. (This assumption may have something to do with early schooling.) But there can be false questions, and the question above is surely false. It is like asking whether your head is for the benefit of your body, or your body for the benefit of your head. In a living organism everything is for the benefit of everything else. The question assumes a false opposition.
St. Paul said Jesus is the head of his body, the Church; he is the head, we the bodily members (see Col 1:18). We cannot be divided from the head and retain any life at all. Nor can a member separated from the body remain alive. A living body is an organism, not a collection of parts. We have to be careful about the images we use to describe the Church. False separations creep in subtly. The image in today’s reading is even more striking than Paul’s: a vine and its branches. Unlike a tree, where you can distinguish clearly between trunk and branches, the vine is just all branches! “I am the vine and you are the branches”: the vine is the branches!
