Resilience not teeth clenched, and Resemblance not possessive

(Jn 15:9-11)

Jesus has just used the image of the «vineyard» to configure the “character” of his new people and the ‘circulation of life’ that unites them.

«Life» of particular intensity and temperament.

The allegory of the Vine and the branches is now translated into existential terms.

The propagation of divine dynamism in us initiates a particular and accentuated ‘current of love’.

The fate of the «withered» branch [deprived of the Spirit's lymph] and cut off, is the sense of futility and distress (v.6).

But - to the Vine - even cutting, cleansing and purifying (v.2) do not prevent it from producing abundant and juicy clusters.

A new song, finally free of dissociation.

In fact, the discomfort brings to the bower an even more pronounced flow, an itinerary of character, and a dilation.

The farmer is the Father (v.1) who cuts and prunes in order to the greater vitality of the field.

Here we linger, surrendering our “predictions” to Grace - in the paradoxical protection of personal concentration.

Let us leave it to Him to bring down the infecund disguises.

In doing so, it will be the wise Farmer who will extinguish the dispersive patterns and turn on our ‘voice’ - the one that belongs to us.

The energy of the metamorphosis that will expand from critical situations will make us «be» instead of “look like” [outside].

From within, the ‘gaze in state of search’ will be shifted and made essential, making room for the virtue of one’s own ‘roots’.

Gradually, the play that required sterile forcing will be skilfully dismantled - so that we do not close ourselves off in preconceptions.

Apparent strength will have to give way to real strength.

Along the Journey, everyone will accept another self-image; without detaching themselves from living together.

Holding hard will leave room for flexibility, for vocational melody.

Thus, making space for the authentic way of being.

By learning to perceive well and rely on all that providentially peeks out, elastic responses will spring forth.

Personal Gaiety will pour into the soul - not the fatuous one of euphoria or exaltation, transient of many leaves.

Because, by not having to hide other preferences, a different identifying character, or our own frailties, we will become stronger.

Without having to control the situation all the time.

The intimate Merriment that will activate us will be the fruit of a new awareness, which finally contributes to the ‘catholic’ conviviality of differences.

Consciousness that combines the divine proposal of non-possessive Similarity with our ability to welcome ourselves - and not fighting unnaturally.

Even in vulnerabilities. Despite the different tastes around.

An ‘ad personam’ vital wave that becomes uncommon resilience, and different Happiness.

As we remain in the Father-Son circulation of love, we will be enveloped by an intoxication that intuits the meaning and uniqueness of our Seed.

This changes the way we see life, relationships, suffering, and Joy.

Laying down the efforts and brooding, encountering the enigmas and unknown sides, here is the Wisdom that dwells within us.

[Thursday 5th wk. in Easter, May 7, 2026]

Resilience not gritted teeth, and Resemblance not possessive

(Jn 15:9-11)

"Abide in love, my love [...] If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love [...] I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be full."

Jesus has just used the image of the vineyard to configure the character of his new people and the circulation of life that unites them.

Life of special intensity and temperament.

The allegory of the vine and the branches is now translated into existential terms.

The propagation of the divine dynamism in us initiates a particular and accentuated current of love.

The Lord does not ask to be loved, but to receive (before transfusing) God's way - the Gift that descends from the Father and from Him.

The fate of the withered branch [deprived of the sap of the Spirit] and cut off is the sense of futility and anguish (v.6).

But - in the Vineyard - even the cuts, castings, cleanings and purifications (v.2) that life imposes do not prevent it from producing abundant and juicy clusters.

A new song, finally free of dissociation.

In fact, discomfort brings an even more pronounced flow to the bower, a walk of character, and a dilation.

It is the liberating opportunity that re-actualises being, and can overflow.

He wants to bring us to the house that belongs to us, not into a territory of chronicity [nailed to the yoke of the canons].

The farmer is the Father (v.1) who cuts and trims the vine of useless shoots - though they too appear green (v.2) - in order to increase the vitality of the field.

Here we linger, surrendering our forecasts to Grace - in the paradoxical protection of personal concentration.

Let us leave it to Him to bring down the infecund disguises.

In this way, it will be the wise Farmer who extinguishes the dispersive patterns and ignites our voice - the voice that belongs to us.

The energy of metamorphosis that will expand from critical situations will make us be, instead of look like [outside].

From within, the searching gaze will be shifted and made essential, leaving room for the virtue of one's own roots.

Gradually the act that required sterile forcing will be skilfully dismantled - so that we do not close ourselves off in preconceptions.

Apparent strength will have to give way to real strength.

By Way, everyone will accept another self-image; without detaching themselves from living together.

Holding on will give way to flexibility, to vocational melody.

Thus, making way for the authentic way of being.

As we learn to take a good look and rely on all that providentially appears, elastic answers will spring forth.

Personal Joy will pour into the soul - not the fatuous one of euphoria or exaltation, transient of the many leaves [to be e.g. like the others; at all costs 'safe', accompanied or crowded].

Because by not having to hide other preferences, a different identifying character, or our own frailties, we will become stronger.

Without always having to control the situation.

The intimate joy that will activate us will be the fruit of a new awareness, which finally contributes to the 'catholic' conviviality of differences.

Awareness that combines the divine proposal of non-possessive similarity with our ability to welcome ourselves - not to struggle unnaturally.

Even in vulnerability. Despite the different tastes around.

An ad personam life-wave that becomes uncommon resilience, and different Happiness.

The experience of fullness, of correspondence in understanding the meaning of one's being, is an impossible task in terms of both capacity and project.

Or of cerebral predictions, normalised expectations, intentions of perfection. That would be a grave commandment.

By forcing, by not laying down mental models, by not stepping back a little in the induced thoughts, the feeling of a human being's condition on earth as a conflicting event, woven with restlessness - unfulfilled, tragic, absurd - would finally prevail.

Taking hold of God is not the result of any expectation, nor of emotions, situations on command, but of allowing oneself to be saved: being introduced into a life of the saved - which sometimes comes suddenly, always unexpectedly.

Loving (even) God cannot be a devout initiative: it is only a gritted-teeth response to an unthinkable and unprepared Manifestation, which precedes and astounds the religious, personal identification of the world.

By remaining in the Father-Son circulation of love, we will be enveloped by an intoxication that intuits the meaning and uniqueness of our seed.

It changes the way we see life, relationships, suffering, and Joy.

Laying aside the efforts and brooding, encountering the enigmas and unknown sides, here is the Wisdom that dwells within us.

To internalise and live the message:

What sap satiates you, the external one?What is your idea of improvement and Happiness?

What is your existential awareness of Revelation?

"Abide", and "observe my commandments". "Observe" only comes second. "Abide" comes first, at the ontological level, namely that we are united with him, he has given himself to us beforehand and has already given us his love, the fruit. It is not we who must produce the abundant fruit; Christianity is not moralism, it is not we who must do all that God expects of the world but we must first of all enter this ontological mystery: God gives himself. His being, his loving, precedes our action and, in the context of his Body, in the context of being in him, being identified with him and ennobled with his Blood, we too can act with Christ.

Ethics are a consequence of being: first the Lord gives us new life, this is the great gift. Being precedes action and from this being action then follows, as an organic reality, for we can also be what we are in our activity. Let us thus thank the Lord for he has removed us from pure moralism; we cannot obey a prescribed law but must only act in accordance with our new identity. Therefore it is no longer obedience, an external thing, but rather the fulfilment of the gift of new life.

I say it once again: let us thank the Lord because he goes before us, he gives us what we must give, and we must then be, in the truth and by virtue of our new being, protagonists of his reality. Abiding and observing: observing is the sign of abiding and abiding is the gift that he gives us but which must be renewed every day of our lives.

(Pope Benedict, Lectio at PSRM 12 February 2010) [more]

2. The loving God is a God who is not remote, but intervenes in history. When he reveals his name to Moses, he does so to assure him of his loving assistance in the saving event of the Exodus, an assistance which will last for ever (cf. Ex 3: 15). Through the prophets' words, he would continually remind his people of this act of love. We read, for example, in Jeremiah:  "Thus says the Lord:  "The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness; when Israel sought for rest, the Lord appeared to him from afar. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you'" (Jer 31: 2-3).

It is a love which takes on tones of immense tenderness (cf. Hos 11: 8f.; Jer 31: 20) and normally uses the image of a father, but sometimes is also expressed in a spousal metaphor:  "I will betroth you to me for ever; I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy" (Hos 2: 19; cf. vv. 18-25).

Even after seeing his people's repeated unfaithfulness to the covenant, this God is still willing to offer his love, creating in man a new heart that enables him to accept the law he is given without reserve, as we read in the prophet Jeremiah:  "I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts" (Jer 31: 33). Likewise in Ezekiel we read:  "A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh" (Ez 36: 26).

3. In the New Testament this dynamic of love is centred on Jesus, the Father's beloved Son (cf. Jn 3: 35; 5: 20; 10: 17), who reveals himself through him. Men and women share in this love by knowing the Son, that is, by accepting his teaching and his work of redemption.

We can only come to the Father's love by imitating the Son in his keeping of the Father's commandments:  "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love" (ibid., 15: 9-10). In this way we also come to share in the Son's knowledge of the Father:  "No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you" (ibid., v. 15).

4. Love enables us to enter fully into the filial life of Jesus, making us sons in the Son (...)

[Pope John Paul II, General Audience, 6 October 1999]

Jesus shows us the path to follow Him: the path of love. His commandment is not a simple teaching which is always abstract or foreign to life. Christ’s commandment is new because He realized it first, He gave His flesh and thus the law of love is written upon the heart of man (cf. Jer 31:33). And how is it written? It is written with the fire of the Holy Spirit. With this Spirit that Jesus gives us, we too can take this path!

It is a real path, a path that leads us to come out of ourselves and go towards others. Jesus showed us that the love of God is realized in love for our neighbour. Both go hand-in-hand. The pages of the Gospel are full of this love: adults and children, educated and uneducated, rich and poor, just and sinners all were welcomed into the heart of Christ.

Therefore, this Word of God calls us to love one another, even if we do not always understand each other, and do not always get along... it is then that Christian love is seen. A love which manifests even if there are differences of opinion or character. Love is greater than these differences! This is the love that Jesus taught us. It is a new love because Jesus and his Spirit renewed it. It is a redeeming love, free from selfishness. A love which gives our hearts joy, as Jesus himself said: “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (Jn 15:11).

It is precisely Christ’s love that the Holy Spirit pours into our hearts to make everyday wonders in the Church and in the world. There are many small and great actions which obey the Lord’s commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you” (cf. Jn 15:12). Small everyday actions, actions of closeness to an elderly person, to a child, to a sick person, to a lonely person, those in difficulty, without a home, without work, an immigrant, a refugee.... Thanks to the strength of the Word of Christ, each one of us can make ourselves the brother or sister of those whom we encounter. Actions of closeness, actions which manifest the love that Christ taught us.

May our Most Holy Mother help us in this, so that in each of our daily lives love of God and love of neighbour may be ever united.

[Pope Francis, Regina Coeli 10 May 2015]

(Jn 15:1-8)

The allegory of the vine and the branches describes the Presence of the Lord in the midst of His own. He is the source of intimate life and works.

The imperative to believe in Him (c.14) becomes a requirement to ‘abide’ in Him [cf. Jn 6:56: Eucharistic theme of the ‘one body’].

Jesus uses the image of the vine and the branches to convey a teaching on familiarity with Him and fraternity among disciples, illustrating the profound bond.

Intimate union, common nourishment, solidarity, continuity of the friendship, require careful and constant work, including «cutting and cleaning» because not all shoots and sprouts bear fruitfulness.

But beware: divine Love is an impulse that demands that we “allow ourselves to be carried”. It drags; it takes us and becomes nourishing Sap. It invests us, purifying us.

It is not a dimension to be understood as an “effort” (basically ours) but as a... being grasped and becoming involved in the motion of the life of Grace.

Jesus invites us to take care of the codes of interiority: to take from them the resolute impulse to which we entrust our choices, and which has already guided us to grow.

In the Gospel passage the Creator-peasant «cuts and purifies», to rekindle this personal ‘understanding’.

Jesus speaks of «the Vine the real one» (v.1): He alone is the authentic Bud of the People planted by the Father.

It means that deviant teachings were inculcated around, and false “vines” were planted or displayed [like the fabulous one filled with golden pampins, on the door of the inner Sanctuary of the Jerusalem’s Temple].

The lifeblood does not flow from riches, nor from doctrines and disciplines - not even from the great, impressive magnificence of the old cult.

And the farmer’s interest is that the Vine brings more and more «Fruit»: Love, nothing else.

Christ's «abiding» in the disciples, His ‘union’ with each one, is essential to live the same divine life on earth.

Faith-love ‘incorporates’ and is contagious.

Where it meets with resistance, it is precisely this obstacle that will incite it to greater purity, hence to more vigour (v.2).

For this reason He first «Cuts off» what was lush in the past but would no longer give anything.

We realize this in the time of the crisis, which unmasks and overturns nagging and importunate positions that deaden development.

Then he «Purifies» (v.2: Greek text) i.e. He proceeds, as the good peasant does, to a second light pruning of the shoots of the vine; by detaching those that absorb sap but thicken too much and lack proper vitality [so as not to deprive the propulsive points of nourishment].

This passage has often been interpreted as an invitation par excellence to embrace a spirituality of 'pruning' [the term in the Gospels does not exist] that makes no sense from the perspective of Faith, that is, of Love.

In traditional religions it is the subject - the «branch» - that has to focus on himself, to identify the shortcomings, defects and vices, and “lopping”, "trimming” them.

Instead, only the Father-farmer knows how to recognize the harmful elements, those parasitic ones and without a future, that are not worth continuing to support.

Life in Christ does not settle us on an image of sterile external perfection, which God is not interested in.

A spontaneous Power, the mystery of vocational roots, the multi-layered work of a radical essence, innate, that accompanies us, are able to feed and correct any geometry at the desk.

It is the Father that takes care of the hindrances, not the individual branch or other branches.

In this way - by giving up external dirigisme - we will not produce irreparable damage.

To internalize and live the message:

Which Lymph satiates you, the external one? What mundane, normal geometry do you follow? What is your idea of improvement in the Faith?

[Wednesday 5th wk. in Easter, May 6, 2026]

(Jn 15:1-8)

The allegory of the vine and the branches describes the Presence of the Lord in the midst of his own. He is the source of intimate life and works.

The imperative to believe in Him (c.14) becomes a requirement to abide in Him [cf. Jn 6:56: Eucharistic theme of the "one body"].

The vine is a plant that demands much attention. In the biblical texts it is taken as a symbol of God's care for His people, and conversely its destruction depicted ancient national calamities.

Jesus uses the image of the vine and the branches to convey a teaching on familiarity with Him and fraternity between disciples, illustrating the deep bond.

Intimate union, common nourishment, solidarity and the continuity of the bond require careful and constant work, including cutting and pruning, because not all shoots and sprouts bear fruitfulness.

But beware: divine Love is an impulse that demands that we allow ourselves to be carried. It drags; it takes us and becomes nourishing sap. It invests us, purifying us.

It is not a dimension to be understood as an effort (essentially ours) but as a ... being grasped and becoming involved in the motion of the life of Grace.

In comparison with the allusions of the First Testament, one notices a substitution: although the vine-dresser continues to represent the Father, the vine is no longer a figure of the people, but of Jesus.

And 'bearing fruit' is a frequent expression indicating only Love: the true result that God expects, the unique work to be achieved in all our works.

Christ's abiding in the disciples, his union with each one, is essential to living the same divine life on earth.

Faith-love incorporates and is contagious. Where it encounters resistance, it is this very obstacle that will incite it to greater purity, hence to greater vigour (v.2).

The man, on the other hand, left to himself does not prolong the influence of Christ; he does not overcome the barriers of nomenclature and normality.

He who imagines himself to be self-sufficient - by breaking the union - cracks the Mystery that envelops him, and will fall prey to his own festering clusters.

But it is also true that a well-bred vineyard is intrusive by its very nature: it blatantly demonstrates a full willingness to express... love (fruit, taste, life).

In short, if mission is marking time today, it is because it has already lost its dynamic vitality: adaptation plans or narratives and external reform will not suffice to resurrect it.

It is the vital encounter that brings out the waves of strength and friendliness.

Over the years, the Vocation has guided and led us to a personal way of being and a characterising sphere of relationships.

Still the Lord continues to call us, so that by entering into his language [unrepeatable, commensurate with each story and sensitivity] we are removed from conditioning that does not belong to us.

Jesus invites us to take care of the codes of interiority, and from them to assume the resolute impulse to which we entrust our choices and which has already guided us to grow.

From the dawn of our history and personality, He alone continues to be the intimate and gushing source of development - even of the imprints we had withheld.

If we had relied on externality, the soul would have dissipated its sap, losing the essence that belonged to it and specified it.

Thus we would not have encountered ourselves and would never have nourished ourselves with the most efficient constituent resources, which now together give balance, greater wholeness, the ability to judge in a situation, amiable transparency.

One becomes oneself, one becomes a well-rounded person, one becomes a missionary, in the same way: by understanding that a lymph, a stimulus, runs through one's veins, which comes from One who knows more than us and opinions.

There are plants in the undergrowth, others towering up; still others, sneaking into the empty areas and mysteriously left to the full light are growing at a much faster rate than those that have been planted and installed for a long time - habitués to the point of seeming homologated.

The magic of creation - vines, shoots - speaks of another realm, of a Logos that relates to us and wisely directs its flows and life forces.

This is what happens in the Spirit, which internalises, calls, nurtures, transmits balance or prophecy, and generates the awe of wholeness and oneness.

How did those seeds (in the example I have in front of me, a double pine and a single pine) take root in precisely the right, intermediate and characteristic places - both aesthetically and in terms of utility, density and breadth? Not even I could have thought of them so neatly arranged; so perfectly aligned in proportion, size, volume and scale.

Only the Hidden Ally sees well the whole, the structure, the functionality and the details of our fibres.

He knows where to lead, and how to nourish us to regain the Ego, the qualitative unity of being.

He does this by sowing, injecting, regenerating, calibrating the energy of his and our Dream. At a convenient pace, and taking care of the rational utilitarian banality of our projects. 

Unceasingly refocusing personal bearing, self-awareness, spontaneous inclination.

As well as by detaching the soul from those who in a thousand ways want to leave us in ignorance of the Creatural Way, to hold on to the commonplaces and totems of their habitual, unnerving world.

This while the Spirit separates our multifaceted thinking from false, one-sided guides [old-fashioned and narrow-minded, or hysterical and sophisticated, but disembodied].

The top of the class perhaps stalk, press, and plagiarise, distracting us from the non-conformist Dialogue with the unrepeatable task of personal life.

In the Gospel passage, the Creator-farmer cuts and purifies, to reconnect.

Jesus speaks of "Vine the true one" (v.1): He alone is the authentic seed of the People planted by the Father.

He means that deviant teachings were being inculcated around, and false vines were being buried or displayed - like the fabulous one filled with golden vines on the door of the inner sanctuary of the Temple of Jerusalem.

The lifeblood does not flow from riches, nor from doctrines and disciplines - not even from the grand, impressive magnificence of the old cult. 

Not even from spineless, à la page fantasies.

The Farmer's interest is that the Vine bears more and more Fruit i.e. Love, nothing else.

In such a trajectory, the Farmer who knows what to do, 'cuts' (v.2) [also so that there are no gangs, no organised marpions. They who absorb the energies of his people [milked and sheared] without the slightest thought of communicating - in turn - authentic life to others.

First they 'cut off' what was thriving in the past but would no longer give anything.

We realise this in the time of the crisis, which unmasks and overturns nagging and importunate positions, mortifying development.

Then he "purifies" (v.2: Greek text), that is, he proceeds as the good peasant does, to a second light pruning of the shoots of the vine; detaching those that absorb sap but thicken too much and do not have the right vitality [so as not to take nourishment away from the propulsive points].

This passage has often been interpreted as an invitation par excellence to embrace a spirituality of 'pruning' [the term in the Gospels does not exist] that makes no sense from the perspective of Faith, that is, of Love.

In ancient religions, it is the subject - the "branch" - that has to focus on itself, identify its shortcomings, faults and vices, and "prune" them.

In contrast, only the Father-farmer knows how to identify the harmful elements, the parasitic ones with no future, which are not worth continuing to support.

He acts in the reality of our path, as one would do with an antiquated and intimately corrupt papier-mache construction [as well as, with fashionable fantasies, which lead to emptiness].

Life in Christ does not concern itself with external limits, indeed it avoids making the [renegade!] flaws of the spiritual life the protagonists.

Such a configuration would be obsessive, inconclusive, because settled on an image of sterile 'perfection' that God is not interested in.

Rather, it will be an astonishment to observe how on the path of Faith precisely the uncertain souls, their unsteady steps and sides considered obscure, can hide the true Pearls of the world.

A spontaneous Power, the mystery of images that spring from the depths of vocational roots and reactivate energies; the multi-layered work of a radical, innate essence that accompanies us [immanent being and knows more about it than we do] are energies all capable of nourishing and correcting any geometry at the table.

How not to produce irreparable damage? By giving in to external dirigisme.

The Father takes care of the impediments, not the individual branch, nor other branches - veterans, experts, veterans that is.

Though higher, bigger... elected to life, they would not provide the right vital mood, nor organic bonding: they would only present us with buried content, and the bill.

To internalise and live the message:

Which lymph satiates you, the external one?

What mundane, normal geometry do you follow?

What is your idea of improvement in the Faith?

The image of the vineyard with its moral, doctrinal and spiritual implications was to recur in the discourse at the Last Supper when, taking his leave of the Apostles, the Lord said: "I am the true vine and my Father is the vinedresser. 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" (Jn 15: 1-2). Thus, starting from the Paschal event, the history of salvation was to reach a decisive turning point and those "other tenants" were to play the lead as chosen shoots grafted on Christ, the true vine, and yield abundant fruits of eternal life (cf. Collect). We too are among these "tenants", grafted on Christ who desired to become the "true vine" himself. Let us pray the Lord that in the Eucharist he will give us his Blood, himself, that he will help us to "bear fruit" for eternal life and for our time.

[Pope Benedict, Homily XII Synod 5 October 2008]

The parable of the vine and the branches highlights, in a special way, that bond, in a certain sense 'organic', that exists between Christ and the Church: between Christ and all those who draw life from him, just as the branch draws life from the vine.

This refers to each individual man, and at the same time it refers to the entire community of God's people: to the Church.

The whole Church - as a rich 'whole' of branches remains in Christ: in the vine. From him it draws life. "Without him it can do nothing": nothing truly salvific.

All salvation, all grace, is found in him: in Christ. And in us: in men, from him, and only by him and through him.

2. Let us give thanks today to the eternal Father, 'for the Father is the vinedresser', for this life that has been revealed to us and given to us, men, in Jesus Christ crucified and risen.

We give thanks for the paschal mystery, in which Christ revealed himself once and for all as the vine, and at the same time revealed his Father as the one who cultivates.

We desire that every man, every Christian, may mature as the "divine cultivator" of the Father - in the Son - in the risen Christ.

We desire that each one, through this "organic" bond with him, bears much fruit.

3. And it is precisely this prayer of ours that we wish to present to the Mother of Christ, inviting her - laetare! - to the Easter joy of the Church.

May she help us to abide in her Son: in Christ the vine, that we may constitute with him one body, vivified by the Spirit of Easter Pentecost.

[Pope John Paul II, Regina Coeli, 5 May 1985]

The Lord presents himself as the true vine, and speaks of us as branches that cannot live without being united to him. He says: “I am the vine, you are the branches” (v. 5). There is no vine without branches, and vice versa. Branches are not self-sufficient, but depend totally on the vine, which is the source of their existence. 

Jesus insists on the verb “to abide”. He repeats it seven times in today’s Gospel reading. Before leaving this world and going to the Father, Jesus wants to reassure his disciples that they can continue to be united with him. He says, “Abide in me, and I in you” (v. 4). This abiding is not a question of abiding passively, of “slumbering” in the Lord, letting oneself be lulled by life: no, it is not this. The abiding in him, the abiding in Jesus that he proposes to us is to abide actively, and also reciprocally. Why? Because the branches can do nothing without the vine, they need sap to grow and to bear fruit; but the vine, too, needs the branches, because fruit does not grow on the tree trunk. It is a reciprocal need, it is a question of a reciprocal abiding so as to bear fruit. We abide in Jesus and Jesus abides in us.

First of all, we need him. The Lord wants to tell us that before the observance of his commandments, before the beatitudes, before works of mercy, it is necessary to be united to him, to abide in him. We cannot be good Christians if we do not abide in Jesus. With him, instead, we can do all things  (cf. Phil 4:13). With him we can do all things.

But Jesus needs us too, like the vine with the branches. Perhaps to say this may seem bold to us, and so let us ask ourselves: in what sense does Jesus need us? He needs our witness. The fruit that as branches we must bear, is the witness of our lives as Christians. After Jesus ascended to the Father, it is the task of the disciples — it is our task — to continue to proclaim the Gospel in words and in deeds. And the disciples — we, Jesus’ disciples — do so by bearing witness to his love: the fruit to be borne is love. Attached to Christ, we receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and thus we can do good to our neighbour, we can do good to society, to the Church. The tree is known by its fruit. A truly Christian life bears witness to Christ.

And how can we achieve this? Jesus says to us: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you” (v.7). This too is bold: the certainty that what we ask for will be given to us. The fruitfulness of our life depends on prayer. We can ask to think like him, to act like him, to see the world and things with the eyes of Jesus. And in this way, love our brothers and sisters, starting from the poorest and those who suffer most, like he did, loving them with his heart and bringing to the world fruits of goodness, fruits of charity, fruits of peace.

Let us entrust ourselves to the intercession of the Virgin Mary. She always remained completely united to Jesus and bore much fruit. May she help us abide in Christ, in his love, in his word, to bear witness to the Risen Lord in the world.

[Pope Francis, Angelus 2 May 2021]