READING OF THE DAY First reading from the Acts of the Apostles Acts 9:26-31
When Saul arrived in Jerusalem he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple. Then Barnabas took charge of him and brought him to the apostles, and he reported to them how he had seen the Lord, and that he had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had spoken out boldly in the name of Jesus. He moved about freely with them in Jerusalem, and spoke out boldly in the name of the Lord. He also spoke and debated with the Hellenists, but they tried to kill him. And when the brothers learned of this, they took him down to Caesarea and sent him on his way to Tarsus.
The church throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria was at peace. It was being built up and walked in the fear of the Lord, and with the consolation of the Holy Spirit it grew in numbers.
Second reading from the First Letter of John 1 Jn 3:18-24
Children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth.
Now this is how we shall know that we belong to the truth and reassure our hearts before him in whatever our hearts condemn, for God is greater than our hearts and knows everything. Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence in God and receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And his commandment is this: we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another just as he commanded us. Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them, and the way we know that he remains in us is from the Spirit he gave us.
GOSPEL OF THE DAY From the Gospel according to John Jn 15:1-8
Jesus said to his disciples: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower. He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit. You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you. Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither; people will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you. By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”
WORDS OF THE HOLY FATHER “The Christian life is to remain in me”. Remain. And here He uses the image of the vine, like the branches remain on a vine. And this remaining is not a passive remaining, a falling asleep in the Lord. This might be a “beatific slumber”, but that’s not what it is. This remain is an active remaining, and it is also a mutual remaining. (…) It is true, the branches without the vine cannot do anything because the sap would not get to them. They need the sap to grow and bear fruit; but even the trunk, the vine needs the branches because the fruit is not attached to the trunk, to the vine. There is a mutual need, a mutual remaining in order to bear fruit. (Homily, Santa Marta, 13 May 2020)
BENEDICT XVI - Jesus of Nazareth - The parable of the Vine in Jesus' Farewell Discourses carries forward the entire history of biblical thought and discourse on the vine and opens up a final depth. "I am the True Vine," says the Lord (Jn 15:1). First of all, the adjective "true" is important. But the essential and most important element in this phrase is "I am"; the Son Himself identifies Himself with the Vine, He Himself has become Vine. He allowed Himself to be planted in the earth. He has entered the Vine: the mystery of the Incarnation, of which John spoke in the prologue, is taken up again in a surprising way. Now the vine is no longer a creature that God looks upon with love, but that He can also uproot and reject. In the Son He Himself has become Vine, He has identified Himself forever and ontologically with the Vine. This Vine can never again be uprooted, it can never again be abandoned to plunder: it belongs definitively to God, through the Son Himself who lives in it. The promise is irrevocable, the unity has become indestructible. This is God's new great historical step which constitutes the deepest meaning of the parable: Incarnation, Death and Resurrection are revealed in all their significance. The "Son of God" Jesus Christ ... was not "yes" and "no", but in Him there was Yes. And in fact all the promises of God in Him have become Yes (2 Cor 1:19) is how St. Paul expresses it. Psalm 80:18 had closely linked the "Son of Man" with the vine. But if the Son has now become the Vine Himself, it follows reciprocally that He in this very way remains one with His own, with all the scattered children of God whom He has come to gather (Jn 11:52). The vine as a Christological attribute also contains within itself an entire Ecclesiology. It indicates the inseparable union of Jesus with His own who, with Him and through Him, are all "vine" and whose vocation is to remain in the Vine. The parable expresses the inseparability of Jesus from His own, their being one with Him and in Him. The discourse of the Vine thus demonstrates the irrevocability of the gift given by God, which will not be taken away. The vine can no longer be uprooted, it can no longer be abandoned to plunder. However, it continually needs purification. Purification, fruit, remaining, commandment, love, unity - these are the great keywords of this drama of being in the Vine in and with the Son, a drama that the Lord places before our soul with His Words. Purification - again and again the Church, the individual, needs purification: the processes of purification, as painful as they are necessary, pervade the whole history, pervade the lives of men who have given themselves to Christ. In these purifications, the mystery of death and resurrection is always present. The self-exaltation of man as well as of institutions must be cut off, what has become too great must be brought back to the simplicity and poverty of the Lord Himself.
-->It is only through such processes of death that fertility persists and is renewed. Purification aims at fruit, the Lord tells us. What is the fruit He is looking for? Let us look first of all at the fruit that He Himself bore by His dying and rising. Let us remember that the parable of the vine is in the context of Jesus' Last Supper. After the multiplication of the loaves, Jesus had spoken of the true Bread from heaven that He would give, thus giving a profound interpretation in advance of the Eucharistic Bread. It is difficult to imagine that, in the discourse of the Vine, He does not tacitly allude to the New Wine, to which He had already alluded at Cana and of which He now gives us the gift - the Wine derived from His Passion, from His Love "to the end" (Jn 13:1). From this point of view, the parable of the Vine undoubtedly has a Eucharistic context. It refers to the fruit brought by Jesus: His Love given on the Cross, which is the New Fine Wine destined for God's nuptial banquet with men. The Eucharist thus becomes comprehensible in all its depth and greatness. It reminds us of the fruit which we, as branches, can and must bear with Christ and in virtue of Christ: the fruit which the Lord expects from us is love - which, with Him, accepts the mystery of the Cross and becomes a sharer in His self-giving - and thus the true justice which prepares the world for the Kingdom of God. Fruit and love go together . The true fruit is the love that went through the cross and God's purifications. If the fruit that we must bear is love, its presupposition is precisely this "abiding" that profoundly has to do with that faith that does not leave the Lord. Prayer is mentioned in v. 7 as an essential moment of this "abiding": the prayerer is promised a sure accomplishment. Praying in the Name of Jesus, however, does not mean asking for just any old thing, but rather asking for the essential gift that Jesus, in His farewell discourses, describes as "joy", while Luke calls it the Holy Spirit, which is basically the same thing. The words about abiding in love already refer to the last verse of Jesus' Priestly Prayer (Jn 17 ): I have made known to them Thy Name, and I will make it known, that the Love with which Thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them). thus linking the discourse of the Vine to the great theme of unity, which the Lord presents as a supplication to the Father.
FAUSTI - "I AM the vine", the real one, as he said he was the bread, the real one. He is the true vine, unlike others that do not bear fruit, like the true bread, different from other foods that do not satisfy, the true light, different from other flashes that do not illuminate. The vineyard is the symbol of the people of the Covenant. Here the vine is substituted for the vineyard, from the collective to the individual who represents everyone. This passage from the multiple to the One is fundamental: in Him, the Son, we all become children, true people of God, who bear the fruit of the Covenant. In Jesus, Son of Man and Son of God, finally the eternal Covenant of God finds an answer in man. The Father is compared to the farmer, or better, to the hard-working and experienced, loving and patient winegrower who cultivates his vineyard. The union between the Son and every man is like that between the vine and the branch. They have one life and produce the same fruit. In Him, True Life, we return to God and His Covenant. Being or dwelling "in" Him is a condition for living and being fruitful. Jesus spoke of abundant masses and of wheat that bears much fruit (12:24). To bear no fruit is to be outside the command and the fundamental blessing of the Creator who wants creatures to share in His fruitfulness. The fruit of which we speak will only be clear at the end. Unfortunately we can be disciples of Jesus only in words, without living His Word. It is a severe warning because we do not love in words or with our tongue, but with deeds and in truth. But if we do not live by Him and do not love our brothers and sisters, we are dead branches, we are not children, who exclude themselves from the Son and the Father, cut off from the source of life. This is the drama of man, but also of God who will find His solution on the Cross, where green wood carries within itself the curse of dry wood. "For God so loved the world that he gave the Only Begotten Son" (3:16). In the Covenant, both Old and New, God is always faithful. What is missing is our response, left to our freedom. The Word reveals our truth, it is a constant exorcism that frees us from lies. The Word of the Lord is Spirit and Life (6:63): it communicates to us the Spirit, the Life of the Son. The Baptism of Christ is above all an immersion in the Word, which makes us know and love it. "Remain in me" It is an imperative: the Lord begs us to be branches united to the vine. We dwell in Him by dwelling in His Love for us, the source of our mutual love. To love Jesus and to do His Will is an act of our freedom, which no one, not even God, can do in our place. We are always in Him because He loves us The union with Him, not only affective but also effective, is the very possibility of a fruitful life. It corresponds to the enthusiastic "being in Christ" of Paul, the refrain of all his letters. Our action springs from what we are: united to the Son we are children and we can bear fruits of fraternal love. Especially in apostolic action, our union with the Lord is decisive. If we do not know Him, we are wrong to do good, if we do not love Him, we lack the strength to do so. Here John is speaking of our "Life in the Spirit", indispensable for glorifying and witnessing to the world the Love of the Father and the Son. Not to dwell in Him, the life of what exists, is equivalent to being already dead. The warning is addressed to the disciples, so that they may dwell in Him, in His Love, so that He may dwell in them. Otherwise, all their activity is straw, which will be burned.
DIAC. GIARLOTTO Gospel. "I am the true vine" (v.1) is the solemn proclamation with which Jesus begins today's Gospel. The vineyard of the Lord, sung by the prophets, was Israel. The symbol of Israel-vine of the Lord-was, in the Temple of Jerusalem, the golden vine that covered the walls of the vestibule and that was increasingly extended thanks to the golden shoots, bunches and vines offered by pilgrims. The vineyard-Israel began to produce sour grapes (Is 5:1-4). The Lord was saddened: "I planted you as an excellent vineyard; how is it that you have turned into a bastard vineyard?" (Jer 2:21) and made a painful but necessary decision: "I will remove its hedge and it will become pastureland; I will tear down its boundary wall and it will be trampled underfoot. I will make it a desert ..." (Is 5:5-7). He did not repudiate it, despite the infidelities, because "the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable". From the sterile stump of this vine He caused a new shoot to sprout on Easter Day: Christ, the true Vine.Jesus is the Vine and the disciples, who are the branches, are part of Him and it is from them that Jesus expects fruits such as justice, righteousness and love. That is why He behaves like a vinedresser: He prunes and cuts them. Pruning and cutting are images of God's care towards every man. The dry branches represent the miseries, the infidelities to the Gospel, the weaknesses, the small and big sins present in each disciple. "You are already clean because of the Word that I have proclaimed to you" (v.3) is the indication of the instrument that the Father uses to prune. The confrontation with the person of Jesus and with His Word constitutes a continuous, necessary pruning. This healing work, being carried out by the Father, is always a reason for joy. The Christian does not produce works of love for himself, in order to congratulate himself on his own moral perfection or even to obtain a reward from God. He is like the Father who is in heaven: He loves without expecting anything in return. His reward is the joy of seeing someone happy, it is to verify that God's love has been manifested through him. Nothing more, but also nothing less: this is, in fact, the very joy of God and, when it will have reached its fullness in everyone, it will be the kingdom of God.
The prophet Hosea, reports the conditions of a return to the Lord, of our conversion: "I will be like dew for Israel; it will bloom like a lily and take root like a tree of Lebanon, its shoots will spread and it will have the beauty of the olive tree and the fragrance of Lebanon. They will return to sit in my shadow, they will revive the grain, they will grow the vines, famous as the wine of Lebanon. Ephraim, what do you still have in common with the idols? I will fulfill it and watch over it , I am like a cypress tree that is always green, thanks to me you will find fruit" (Hos 14,6-9) Ezekiel describes the Source of the Temple, the Living Water that flows from the right side of the Sanctuary, from the wounded Side of Christ, from which flow the Blood and Water, the Sacraments from which we are born again; Baptism and Eucharist. The living Water of the Spirit flows into the world, healing its waters and reviving all that it irrigates. On the banks of the river there will be fruit trees, whose fruits will not cease, and every month they will ripen and become food, and the leaves will be medicine to heal every evil and satisfy every need! Of what fruits does the Lord speak? Of those that we can give ourselves, grafted into Him, nourished by His Life, which manifests in us the feelings of Jesus ("Who, though He was divine in nature, did not regard His equality with God as a jealous treasure... He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death" Phil 2,5-11) and His Spirit. ." The fruit of the Spirit is: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control; against these things there is no law. If we live by the Spirit, we also walk according to the Spirit" (Gal 5:22-25). The Spirit, the Vital Lymph of the Vine Tree, love is always the basis, the source of every fruit and joy indicates its presence, every fruit is the conjugation of love in different circumstances, times and ways.
READING OF THE DAY
RispondiEliminaFirst reading from the Acts of the Apostles
Acts 9:26-31
When Saul arrived in Jerusalem he tried to join the disciples,
but they were all afraid of him,
not believing that he was a disciple.
Then Barnabas took charge of him and brought him to the apostles,
and he reported to them how he had seen the Lord,
and that he had spoken to him,
and how in Damascus he had spoken out boldly in the name of Jesus.
He moved about freely with them in Jerusalem,
and spoke out boldly in the name of the Lord.
He also spoke and debated with the Hellenists,
but they tried to kill him.
And when the brothers learned of this,
they took him down to Caesarea
and sent him on his way to Tarsus.
The church throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria was at peace.
It was being built up and walked in the fear of the Lord,
and with the consolation of the Holy Spirit it grew in numbers.
Second reading from the First Letter of John
1 Jn 3:18-24
Children, let us love not in word or speech
but in deed and truth.
Now this is how we shall know that we belong to the truth
and reassure our hearts before him
in whatever our hearts condemn,
for God is greater than our hearts and knows everything.
Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us,
we have confidence in God
and receive from him whatever we ask,
because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.
And his commandment is this:
we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ,
and love one another just as he commanded us.
Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them,
and the way we know that he remains in us
is from the Spirit he gave us.
GOSPEL OF THE DAY
From the Gospel according to John
Jn 15:1-8
Jesus said to his disciples:
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.
He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit,
and every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit.
You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.
Remain in me, as I remain in you.
Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own
unless it remains on the vine,
so neither can you unless you remain in me.
I am the vine, you are the branches.
Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit,
because without me you can do nothing.
Anyone who does not remain in me
will be thrown out like a branch and wither;
people will gather them and throw them into a fire
and they will be burned.
If you remain in me and my words remain in you,
ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.
By this is my Father glorified,
that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”
WORDS OF THE HOLY FATHER
“The Christian life is to remain in me”. Remain. And here He uses the image of the vine, like the branches remain on a vine. And this remaining is not a passive remaining, a falling asleep in the Lord. This might be a “beatific slumber”, but that’s not what it is. This remain is an active remaining, and it is also a mutual remaining. (…) It is true, the branches without the vine cannot do anything because the sap would not get to them. They need the sap to grow and bear fruit; but even the trunk, the vine needs the branches because the fruit is not attached to the trunk, to the vine. There is a mutual need, a mutual remaining in order to bear fruit. (Homily, Santa Marta, 13 May 2020)
BENEDICT XVI - Jesus of Nazareth - The parable of the Vine in Jesus' Farewell Discourses carries forward the entire history of biblical thought and discourse on the vine and opens up a final depth.
RispondiElimina"I am the True Vine," says the Lord (Jn 15:1). First of all, the adjective "true" is important.
But the essential and most important element in this phrase is "I am"; the Son Himself identifies Himself with the Vine, He Himself has become Vine.
He allowed Himself to be planted in the earth. He has entered the Vine: the mystery of the Incarnation, of which John spoke in the prologue, is taken up again in a surprising way. Now the vine is no longer a creature that God looks upon with love, but that He can also uproot and reject.
In the Son He Himself has become Vine, He has identified Himself forever and ontologically with the Vine.
This Vine can never again be uprooted, it can never again be abandoned to plunder: it belongs definitively to God, through the Son Himself who lives in it.
The promise is irrevocable, the unity has become indestructible. This is God's new great historical step which constitutes the deepest meaning of the parable: Incarnation, Death and Resurrection are revealed in all their significance.
The "Son of God" Jesus Christ ... was not "yes" and "no", but in Him there was Yes.
And in fact all the promises of God in Him have become Yes (2 Cor 1:19) is how St. Paul expresses it.
Psalm 80:18 had closely linked the "Son of Man" with the vine. But if the Son has now become the Vine Himself, it follows reciprocally that He in this very way remains one with His own, with all the scattered children of God whom He has come to gather (Jn 11:52).
The vine as a Christological attribute also contains within itself an entire Ecclesiology.
It indicates the inseparable union of Jesus with His own who, with Him and through Him, are all "vine" and whose vocation is to remain in the Vine. The parable expresses the inseparability of Jesus from His own, their being one with Him and in Him. The discourse of the Vine thus demonstrates the irrevocability of the gift given by God, which will not be taken away.
The vine can no longer be uprooted, it can no longer be abandoned to plunder. However, it continually needs purification.
Purification, fruit, remaining, commandment, love, unity - these are the great keywords
of this drama of being in the Vine in and with the Son, a drama that the Lord places before our soul with His Words.
Purification - again and again the Church, the individual, needs purification: the processes of purification, as painful as they are necessary, pervade the whole history, pervade the lives of men who have given themselves to Christ.
In these purifications, the mystery of death and resurrection is always present.
The self-exaltation of man as well as of institutions must be cut off, what has become too great must be brought back to the simplicity and poverty of the Lord Himself.
-->It is only through such processes of death that fertility persists and is renewed.
RispondiEliminaPurification aims at fruit, the Lord tells us. What is the fruit He is looking for? Let us look first of all at the fruit that He Himself bore by His dying and rising.
Let us remember that the parable of the vine is in the context of Jesus' Last Supper.
After the multiplication of the loaves, Jesus had spoken of the true Bread from heaven that He would give, thus giving a profound interpretation in advance of the Eucharistic Bread.
It is difficult to imagine that, in the discourse of the Vine, He does not tacitly allude to the New Wine, to which He had already alluded at Cana and of which He now gives us the gift - the Wine derived from His Passion, from His Love "to the end" (Jn 13:1).
From this point of view, the parable of the Vine undoubtedly has a Eucharistic context.
It refers to the fruit brought by Jesus: His Love given on the Cross, which is the New Fine Wine destined for God's nuptial banquet with men.
The Eucharist thus becomes comprehensible in all its depth and greatness.
It reminds us of the fruit which we, as branches, can and must bear with Christ and in virtue of Christ: the fruit which the Lord expects from us is love - which, with Him, accepts the mystery of the Cross and becomes a sharer in His self-giving - and thus the true justice which prepares the world for the Kingdom of God. Fruit and love go together .
The true fruit is the love that went through the cross and God's purifications.
If the fruit that we must bear is love, its presupposition is precisely this "abiding" that profoundly has to do with that faith that does not leave the Lord. Prayer is mentioned in v. 7 as an essential moment of this "abiding": the prayerer is promised a sure accomplishment.
Praying in the Name of Jesus, however, does not mean asking for just any old thing, but rather asking for the essential gift that Jesus, in His farewell discourses, describes as "joy", while Luke calls it the Holy Spirit, which is basically the same thing.
The words about abiding in love already refer to the last verse of Jesus' Priestly Prayer (Jn 17 ): I have made known to them Thy Name, and I will make it known, that the Love with which Thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them). thus linking the discourse of the Vine to the great theme of unity, which the Lord presents as a supplication to the Father.
FAUSTI - "I AM the vine", the real one, as he said he was the bread, the real one.
RispondiEliminaHe is the true vine, unlike others that do not bear fruit, like the true bread, different from other foods that do not satisfy, the true light, different from other flashes that do not illuminate.
The vineyard is the symbol of the people of the Covenant.
Here the vine is substituted for the vineyard, from the collective to the individual who represents everyone.
This passage from the multiple to the One is fundamental: in Him, the Son, we all become children, true people of God, who bear the fruit of the Covenant.
In Jesus, Son of Man and Son of God, finally the eternal Covenant of God finds an answer in man.
The Father is compared to the farmer, or better, to the hard-working and experienced, loving and patient winegrower who cultivates his vineyard. The union between the Son and every man is like that between the vine and the branch.
They have one life and produce the same fruit.
In Him, True Life, we return to God and His Covenant.
Being or dwelling "in" Him is a condition for living and being fruitful. Jesus spoke of abundant masses and of wheat that bears much fruit (12:24). To bear no fruit is to be outside the command and the fundamental blessing of the Creator who wants creatures to share in His fruitfulness.
The fruit of which we speak will only be clear at the end.
Unfortunately we can be disciples of Jesus only in words, without living His Word.
It is a severe warning because we do not love in words or with our tongue, but with deeds and in truth. But if we do not live by Him and do not love our brothers and sisters, we are dead branches, we are not children, who exclude themselves from the Son and the Father, cut off from the source of life. This is the drama of man, but also of God who will find His solution on the Cross, where green wood carries within itself the curse of dry wood. "For God so loved the world that he gave the Only Begotten Son" (3:16). In the Covenant, both Old and New, God is always faithful.
What is missing is our response, left to our freedom.
The Word reveals our truth, it is a constant exorcism that frees us from lies.
The Word of the Lord is Spirit and Life (6:63): it communicates to us the Spirit, the Life of the Son.
The Baptism of Christ is above all an immersion in the Word, which makes us know and love it.
"Remain in me" It is an imperative: the Lord begs us to be branches united to the vine.
We dwell in Him by dwelling in His Love for us, the source of our mutual love.
To love Jesus and to do His Will is an act of our freedom, which no one, not even God, can do in our place.
We are always in Him because He loves us
The union with Him, not only affective but also effective, is the very possibility of a fruitful life.
It corresponds to the enthusiastic "being in Christ" of Paul, the refrain of all his letters.
Our action springs from what we are: united to the Son we are children and we can bear fruits of fraternal love.
Especially in apostolic action, our union with the Lord is decisive.
If we do not know Him, we are wrong to do good, if we do not love Him, we lack the strength to do so.
Here John is speaking of our "Life in the Spirit",
indispensable for glorifying and witnessing to the world the Love of the Father and the Son.
Not to dwell in Him, the life of what exists, is equivalent to being already dead. The warning is addressed to the disciples, so that they may dwell in Him, in His Love, so that He may dwell in them. Otherwise, all their activity is straw, which will be burned.
DIAC. GIARLOTTO Gospel. "I am the true vine" (v.1) is the solemn proclamation with which Jesus begins today's Gospel. The vineyard of the Lord, sung by the prophets, was Israel. The symbol of Israel-vine of the Lord-was, in the Temple of Jerusalem, the golden vine that covered the walls of the vestibule and that was increasingly extended thanks to the golden shoots, bunches and vines offered by pilgrims. The vineyard-Israel began to produce sour grapes (Is 5:1-4). The Lord was saddened: "I planted you as an excellent vineyard; how is it that you have turned into a bastard vineyard?" (Jer 2:21) and made a painful but necessary decision: "I will remove its hedge and it will become pastureland; I will tear down its boundary wall and it will be trampled underfoot. I will make it a desert ..." (Is 5:5-7). He did not repudiate it, despite the infidelities, because "the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable". From the sterile stump of this vine He caused a new shoot to sprout on Easter Day: Christ, the true Vine.Jesus is the Vine and the disciples, who are the branches, are part of Him and it is from them that Jesus expects fruits such as justice, righteousness and love. That is why He behaves like a vinedresser: He prunes and cuts them. Pruning and cutting are images of God's care towards every man. The dry branches represent the miseries, the infidelities to the Gospel, the weaknesses, the small and big sins present in each disciple. "You are already clean because of the Word that I have proclaimed to you" (v.3) is the indication of the instrument that the Father uses to prune. The confrontation with the person of Jesus and with His Word constitutes a continuous, necessary pruning. This healing work, being carried out by the Father, is always a reason for joy.
RispondiEliminaThe Christian does not produce works of love for himself, in order to congratulate himself on his own moral perfection or even to obtain a reward from God. He is like the Father who is in heaven: He loves without expecting anything in return. His reward is the joy of seeing someone happy, it is to verify that God's love has been manifested through him. Nothing more, but also nothing less: this is, in fact, the very joy of God and, when it will have reached its fullness in everyone, it will be the kingdom of God.
The prophet Hosea, reports the conditions of a return to the Lord, of our conversion: "I will be like dew for Israel; it will bloom like a lily and take root like a tree of Lebanon, its shoots will spread and it will have the beauty of the olive tree and the fragrance of Lebanon. They will return to sit in my shadow, they will revive the grain, they will grow the vines, famous as the wine of Lebanon. Ephraim, what do you still have in common with the idols? I will fulfill it and watch over it ,
RispondiEliminaI am like a cypress tree that is always green, thanks to me you will find fruit" (Hos 14,6-9)
Ezekiel describes the Source of the Temple, the Living Water that flows from the right side of the Sanctuary, from the wounded Side of Christ, from which flow the Blood and Water, the Sacraments from which we are born again; Baptism and Eucharist.
The living Water of the Spirit flows into the world, healing its waters and reviving all that it irrigates. On the banks of the river there will be fruit trees, whose fruits will not cease, and every month they will ripen and become food, and the leaves will be medicine to heal every evil and satisfy every need!
Of what fruits does the Lord speak?
Of those that we can give ourselves, grafted into Him, nourished by His Life, which manifests in us the feelings of Jesus ("Who, though He was divine in nature, did not regard His equality with God as a jealous treasure... He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death" Phil 2,5-11) and His Spirit. ." The fruit of the Spirit is: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control; against these things there is no law.
If we live by the Spirit, we also walk according to the Spirit" (Gal 5:22-25).
The Spirit, the Vital Lymph of the Vine Tree, love is always the basis, the source of every fruit and joy indicates its presence, every fruit is the conjugation of love in different circumstances, times and ways.