Jn 15:1-8 (.9-11)

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 the 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 profound bond.

Intimate union, common nourishment, solidarity and continuity of the bond require careful and constant work, including cutting and mowing, because not all the 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 in and becomes nourishing sap. It purifies us.

It is not a dimension to be understood as an effort (basically ours) but as a... Be grasped and become 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 that indicates 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 meets with resistance, it is precisely this 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 the normal.

He who imagines himself 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 vine-love 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.

Again, the Lord continues to call, 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 take 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 footprints we had withheld.

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

In this way, we would not have encountered ourselves and would not have been nourished by the more efficient constituent resources, which now together give balance, greater completeness, 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, flows 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 correlates with us and wisely directs its flows and life forces.

This is what happens in the Spirit, which internalises, calls, nourishes, transmits balance or prophecy, and generates the astonishment of the whole and uniqueness.

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 aligned in perfect proportion, measure, volume and scale.

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

He knows where to lead, and how to nourish us to regain the 'I', 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 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 is while the Spirit separates our multifaceted thinking from false one-sided guides [old-fashioned and narrow-minded, or hysterical and sophisticated, but disembodied].

Those at the top of the class perhaps stalk, chase, 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.

It means that deviant teachings were inculcated around, and false vines were buried or displayed - like the fabulous one filled with golden vines on the door of the inner sanctum 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 interest of the Farmer is that the Vine bears more and more Fruit, that is, Love, nothing else.

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

First it 'cuts' what was lush 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 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; 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.

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

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

Life in Christ does not concern itself with external limits; on the contrary, it avoids making the faults [renegades!] of the spiritual life 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 in the path of Faith precisely the uncertain souls, their unsteady steps and sides considered dark, can hide the true Pearls of the world.

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? It yields to external dirigisme.

The impediments are taken care of by the Father, not by the individual branch, nor by 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 contents, and the bill.

To internalise and live the message:

Which lymph satiates you, the external one?

What worldly, normal geometry do you follow?

What is your idea of improvement in the Faith?

Mysticism of Joy: being oneself, sudden revelation

Resilience not gritted teeth, and Resemblance not possessiveness

(Jn 15:9-11)

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

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

Loving (even) God cannot be a devout initiative: it is only an ungritted response to an unthinking 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 down the efforts and brooding, encountering the enigmas and unknown sides, the Wisdom that inhabits us emerges.

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?