John 15:1-8
“By this my father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.” I think we all see ourselves as disciples, or we wouldn't be here. We try to live good lives, we pray, we treat others as we would like to be treated -- but maybe we don’t always pay attention to the first part of Jesus’ statement, that you bear much fruit.
Years ago One of my daughters was doing graduate work in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and I went there to visit her. I was trying to help her get set up in some kind of housing, and we had a free day, so we went into the hinterland, because we had heard that there were wineries in Louisiana. We came to a winery, and walked in to see a young dad chasing a small child and after catching him, disappearing into another part of the complex. We waited and waited, and finally an older guy came out. He had a nice creole accent, and took us to the tasting room. He enthusiastically had us taste several of his wines. They were all terrible. He kept saying that they were meant to be used with Louisiana cuisine, which tends to be spicy. He then took us out to look at where he grew the grapes, and since I’ve gone to many vineyards, I was shocked to see the disorder and wild growth. These grapevines, I believe, had never been pruned. There were bearing grapes, but their main product seemed to be more vines and grape leaves. So we bought a couple of bottles. I may still have them.
In a commercial vineyard, the farmer spends a lot of time tending the vines. In the spring as the vines come to life, the branches have flowers or leaves. The flowers are where the grapes will be. The farmer trims away the branches with no flowers, and may prune back the branches that have flowers. The ancient idea was to get the vine to put all it’s energy into the formation of grapes, and that seems to be how it works. When you get to the harvest of a well-tended vineyard, sometimes it looks like the vine is almost dead -- but there are big fat clusters of grapes on the branches that have survived the pruning.
Jesus is making the point here that the only way we can be fruitful as we are meant to be is to be pruned. And being pruned isn’t fun. But you can see how it works for us human beings. We have some control over the process. We always have the choice of letting go of things we love, things we thought were permanent, and clinging to Christ, or letting go of Christ to chase the things we love in the world. And the more we choose Christ, the more fruitful we will be. How do we measure fruitfulness? We don’t. We go about our lives trying to imitate Jesus Christ. We learn about his life and observe the things he did. We try to be “other Christs” as were the saints. We can be pretty sure we are seeing Christ when we closely examine the Church’s saints, because that’s the whole purpose of canonization -- to point to someone who has imitated Christ, someone we can learn from. We may never see the fruit that we bear. I’m sure Saint Francis never dreamed he would be the founder of not one but several orders of men and women who take him for their model. But what is obvious is that Francis didn’t care about too much besides his relationship with Jesus. Starting the Franciscan order and all the other things he did in his life was a consequence of his love for the Lord. Or look at Luis and Zele Martrin, the parents of Saint Therese of Lisieux. Zele left letters to members of her family in which she expressed her determination to get her children into heaven. She and Luis made sure the family prayed together, knew their catechism lessons, and so forth. And they prayed for their children. Luis continued this resolve after Zele died. When you read about this couple, they seemed to have a lot of fun, a strong prayer life, and self-discipline; and indeed besides Therese, their other four children who survived infancy all became nuns. So you never know what fruit you will bear -- our job is to be faithful and remain attached to the vine, no matter what we have to give up to do that.
We can’t ask whether we are bearing fruit. That can’t be measured. A few years ago there was a thriving religious order called the “Legionaries of Christ”. I was impressed by them; they seemed to be just what the Church needed. Then it turned out that their founder had several relationships with women, treated his staff badly, insisted on blind obedience from the members of his order, and misused the money the order raised. When all this came to light the Pope ordered him to withdraw from leadership and take up a life of repentance, which he did, to his credit; but the order has sickened and almost died. In another place Jesus promises that “by their fruits you will know them”.
We don’t have control over whether our efforts will bear fruit, or for that matter, when they will bear fruit. But Jesus promises that those who remain in him will bear fruit. That’s the goal of our faith.
