“I am the vine, you are the branches”
The mercy of the Lord is without limit, because Our Lord is eternal and without limit. In the Easter season, the Gospels are a witness to the mercy of God. The prophet Zechariah said, “Strike the shepherd that the sheep may be dispersed.”[i] When Jesus was crucified, the sheep (disciples) dispersed. On the first day, when He had risen, Jesus immediately begins to unite what was scattered. Two disciples, the two on their way to Emmaus, have removed themselves from the fold and are leaving Jerusalem. Jesus goes out and gets them; He brings them back. During Cycle B, this is the Gospel for the 3rd Sunday of Easter.
The disciples on the road to Emmaus, show us the weakness of our humanity, our nature to scatter, run, and hide. They were nothing and we are nothing without our Shepherd. In Cycle B, the Gospel for the 4th Sunday of Easter is The Good Shepherd.
When is a time when we have scattered, ran, and hid from God? How did He come and get us?
Who is the only one who is able to go out and get the scattered flock? It is the Good Shepherd. In our weakness and fear, it is Jesus Himself that comes out to meet us and gather us back in.
What does He bring us back to? Jesus, the Good Shepherd brings us back not just to the community, not just to other disciples, but to Himself. In just five sentences, Jesus speaks the word, “remain” eight times. “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…Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither…If you remain in me and my words remain in you.” He brings us back so that we may remain with Him and so that He may remain with us. This is seen in the Mass when at the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God), the host, which is Jesus’s Body is broken and shown to the congregation. We witness the brokenness, the scattering. The next part of the Mass is Communion, when the faithful are brought back in communion with Our Lord. We receive Him, not broken but whole and entire. At each Mass, Jesus brings His scattered flock back to remain in Him. The Mass is the fulfillment of His words in the Bread of Life discourse. “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.”[ii]
It is in today’s Gospel that we see the culmination of the previous two Sunday Gospels in the following pattern:
3rd Sunday of Easter – The Road to Emmaus – Our tendency to scatter, run and hide (concupiscence)
4th Sunday of Easter – The Good Shepherd – We have a loving shepherd that brings us back, saves us
5th Sunday of Easter – The Vine and Branches – He desires to remain in us and for us to remain in Him
This pattern is the pattern - the road of discipleship. Each disciple struggles with concupiscence. What is concupiscence? Concupiscence: Human appetites or desires which remain disordered due to the temporal consequences of original sin, which remain even after Baptism, and which produce and inclination to sin.[iii] Just as the disciples were “scattered” so too our human appetites or desires are “scattered”. Our appetites or desires are not integrated, but rather segregated.
What is the result when human appetites and desires are segregated? When human appetites and desires are scattered and not ordered toward God, they are disordered. At this point the human acts much like an animal. What is the basic desire of an animal? To eat, sleep, and reproduce. When a human does not order his desires toward God, he quickly falls into a life only of eating, sleeping and reproduction. In the case of reproduction, many times man thinks and acts less than an animal. Reproduction is not desired and a contraceptive, anti-reproductive, mentality is believed and practiced. “Chastity means the successful integration of sexuality with the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being.”[iv]
What is the result when human appetites and desires are integrated, as is the case with the sexual desires through chastity? There is an inner unity of man between body and soul. In other words, the divine life that dwells in our soul is united with our body and act as one. There is peace. The desires and appetites are ordered toward God and find rest in God.
Search: Fully Human: No Less, No More (Part I and II)
It is the Good Shepherd that integrates and orders our segregated, disordered desires. Once our body and soul are in unity, and our desires and appetites are ordered, what does the disciple do? We must keep the unity and order. To remain in Christ is to remain in order and to have unity of body and soul. In the natural order once something is at rest it will stay at rest until acted upon by an external force.
What are the external forces that attempt to bring about disunity and disorder in the spiritual life? The devil does not want us to be ordered toward God and so from the beginning his goal is to bring separation between man and God; creature and creator. In the garden he sows doubt in the mind of man when he says, “Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden…You certainly will not die! No, God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is bad.”[v] In last Sunday’s Gospel (4thSunday of Easter) we read about this ancient enemy. It is Satan, the one that promises that man won’t die, that seeks only death. “A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy.”[vi] Death is the separation between body and soul. Not only does Satan desire the physical death of the disciple, but he most especially desires the spiritual death of a disciple which is disunity of body and soul and disorder of appetites and desires. We must remember that Satan is an external force and we want to keep it that way. This is why the Church offers to us many forms of exorcisms, including the first exorcism that occurs at our Baptism. Another exorcism that the Church gives to us is in the Rite for the Blessing and Sprinkling of Water. In this rite salt can be added to the Holy Water. The priest prays, “We humbly ask you, almighty God: be pleased in your faithful love to bless this salt you have created, for it was you who commanded the prophet Elisha to cast salt into water,
that impure water might be purified. Grant, O Lord, we pray, that, wherever this mixture of salt and water is sprinkled, every attack of the enemy may be repulsed and your Holy Spirit may be present to keep us safe at all times. Through Christ our Lord.”[vii]
Search: Three Battles
VIDEO – Dr. Peter Kreeft - How to Win the Culture War
Dr. Peter Kreeft explains seven ways that Satan, the external force attempts, sometimes with great success to segregate and disorder us.
Another external force is the world. The world appeals to our desires and promises to satisfy our desires. The world was created by God and is good, but when we worship “the world” and “the things of the world” we have given up worship of the creator in order to worship creation. This is a disorder. When we desire creation and what it offers, rather than the Creator and what He offers, our desires will never be satisfied. The fact that the world does not satisfy us does not mean that the world is bad, but rather is a testimony to how good man is. In the creation story God says of man “very good”, while to the rest of creation, God says “it is good”. “Man is so great that nothing on earth can satisfy him. Only when he turns to God is he content.”[viii]
[i] Zechariah 13:7
[ii] John 6:56
[iii] Catechism of the Catholic Church – Glossary
[iv] Catechism of the Catholic Church – Section 2337
[v] Genesis 3:1-4
[vi] John 10:10
[vii] The Roman Missal – Rite for the Blessing and Sprinkling of Water
[viii] Saint John Vianney