Dear Friends,
It’s that season. The pruning of trees and vines is in
process wherever the green grows. Pruning
is a necessary means to an end – to
increase the yield – to bear more and better fruit. In the vineyards combing
the Finger Lakes, this spring, workers with a professional eye, will go out to
examine new shoots growing on the grapevines. The workers will decide which
shoots hold the most promise. The rest,
they’ll snip away, so that the yield of grapes will be the best possible.
Pruning also helps people, although we don’t necessarily
find the idea initially appealing. The story of Paul’s pruning is told in
the first reading for the Fifth Sunday
of Easter (B Cycle). Paul has been pruned by his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, but the community is
still suspicious of him. It takes Barnabas – trustworthy Barnabas-to introduce Paul to the community, and graft
him onto the vine. The graft took.
One attribute people associate with pruning is a certain
meekness – a diminishment of zest or feistiness. But Paul was never meek –
before or after his conversion. Meekness is not the purpose of pruning.
The Gospel of the Fifth Sunday takes the pruning metaphor a
step further, for it is also absolutely necessary to be connected to the vine.
We are connected to Christ. We are connected to each other. Yet connectedness is an incredibly hard lesson for Americans,
in particular, to internalize.
Robert Bellah
observes in his classic, Habits of the Heart, that “Clearly the meaning
of life for most Americans is to become one’s own person, almost to give birth
to oneself." Much of this is negative. It involves breaking free from family,
community and inherited ideas or as Frank Sinatra crooned and the public
still quotes “I'll Have It My Way."
Yet, if Christ’s life is to be grasped at all, if we are to
understand his message at all, this Gospel passage is pivotal, for it says
that everything and everyone is somehow
connected with everything and everyone else and that isolation does not
exist, although we would like to think so.
You and I do not create connectedness. We discover it. We
discover that we belong to one another and that we belong to Christ, in whom we
grow, and who sustains and nourishes us. Once we discover our connectedness,
admit of its meaning and value in our lives, then self-centeredness has no part in us, nor
violence or killing competition.
Being connected with one another through Christ does not
mean we lose our individuality with all its grandeur and funny little quirks.
On this particular vine, the branches do not all look alike or act alike. We
are ourselves – always in the process of becoming more ourselves. At the same
time, we do not fear pruning, and we draw courage, example, energy, nourishment
from one another because we belong to Christ .
Just a side note, You are invited to join me for:
Just a side note, You are invited to join me for:
The Synod on the Family
The Perspective
of Married Couples
Wednesday, May 6, 2015, 7 to 8:30 pm
SSJ Motherhouse
150 French Road
SSJ Motherhouse
150 French Road
This is a
follow- up to our March program,
when Bishop
Clark gave a comprehensive overview
of the Synod
on the Family which is to resume in October.
You need not
have been to hear Bishop Clark
to take part
in this conversation.
Barbara and Jack Clarcq, Bob
and Janet Fein and
Barbara and Bob Finsterwalder
were asked
what positive points they would make
if they were
invited to speak at the coming Synod.
Come, hear
their thoughts, and add your own as
we hone our
perspectives and our language
and draw
encouragement
from them
and from each other.
Please let
us know you are coming. Just call the Fresh
Wind phone line
and let us
know you’re coming. 585.641.8184
~Sister Joan Sobala
