5th Sunday of Easter (B)

(Edited) Reflections (from) 5th Sunday of Easter (B), May 6, 2009

First reading: Acts 4:26-31
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 22
Second reading: 1 John 3:18-24
Gospel reading: John 15:1-8

"For apart from Me you can do nothing."

The gospel passage for the 5th Sunday of Easter, is taken from the 15th chapter of John, verses 1-8. In the passage, Jesus gives a discourse on how our lives and good works are really rooted in our relationship with Him. He says that He is the vine, the Father is the vine-grower, and all His followers are the branches. If anyone is not rooted in Jesus, he would be like a barren branch. But those who are in a personal relationship with Jesus, will bear fruit, and increase the yield of good in their life and work.

Jesus speaks about imagery in His parables which the people of His time are familiar with: shepherd-sheep, sower-seed, and wedding banquet-wedding guests. For it is in such simple parables, and things of nature which His people can easily relate with: the mustard seed, faith that can move mountains, the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, etc. In today's passage from the gospel of John, He speaks of vine-branches imagery. He uses this image to make a very essential point in life: without God, all life and successes in work are empty and barren. However, if all life and work are rooted in God (like branches to the vine), the fruits produced will overflow not only with the material essentials needed for life, but with a spirit of joy in doing God's will.

In the course of a lifetime, all people experience both successes and failures: some more intensely than others, while others with less severity or tragedy. All that is part of being human and living in a world also filled with both positive and negative realities. Before their conversion, many of the Church's Saints sought the pleasures of life without realizing that it can make an opposite turn. But this was exactly the time God sought the opportunity to make Himself real for them. He used such experiences to help His children mature with an attitude akin to His Son Jesus. It is in their relationship with God that one can see God's Hand as the Vine-grower trimming their souls to bear the spiritual fruit that is building His Kingdom: joy, fortitude, charity, perseverance, fidelity, generosity, and wisdom. These are good fruits needed in the midst of the darkness of their centuries, and also the good fruits needed up to this time in our world.