Homily: 5th Sunday of Easter – Cycle B
Where I grew up in Joliet, Illinois, there were a lot of Catholic
churches. When many of the immigrants
from Europe migrated to the area and settled, they each established a parish
according to their ethnic heritage. The Croatians
had their parish, the Slovenians had their parish, the Italians had their
parish, the Polish had their parish, and so on. This made sense because, when they founded the
parishes, none of these ethnic groups spoke the same language. Unfortunately, this also led to divisions between
the ethnic groups: in which persons from one parish were not often welcomed at
one of the other parishes. In fact, they
were often looked at with suspicion and derision. (Maybe some of you have had an experience like
this here at Saint Paul parish.)
Now, while I wouldn’t go so far as to say that their
behavior is excusable, I will say that it is understandable. The ethnic groups that made up each parish
were trying hard to maintain their identity and so were anxious about allowing
others to infiltrate and possibly dilute their heritage. As the generations that followed adopted English
as their language, they began to intermingle with persons from the other
parishes and these divisions started to fade away. Remnants of the divisions still remain, however:
a sign that God’s Church must always contend with our human weaknesses.
The early Church faced similar challenges. Today, in particular, we remember the
challenge it faced in receiving Saul, also known as Paul. When Saul left Jerusalem, he was the most fervent
persecutor of the disciples of Jesus; but when he returned—having encountered
the risen Christ on the road to Damascus and having been baptized by the
disciple Ananias in Damascus—Saul was now a disciple himself. Having heard nothing of this, the community in
Jerusalem was suspicious of him.
Thankfully, the disciple Barnabas had gone to Damascus and had seen for
himself how Saul had converted and how he was now proclaiming Jesus as the
Messiah. It was, therefore, on the
testimony of Barnabas—a trusted member of the community—that Saul was then
accepted into the community of believers.
Nevertheless, Saul continued to encounter difficulties. Among the Hebrew-speaking Jews, he was heard
and accepted. Among the Greek-speaking
Jews, however, he was being rejected (they even attempted to kill him!). It’s hard to say what it was that caused the
Greek speaking Jews to react so negatively to Saul, but I suspect that it had
something to do with the fact that, although he was a Jew, he wasn’t a Greek-speaking Jew, and so they had a
hard time accepting him. Thus we see how
the unifying force of Jesus was still being limited by the weaknesses of human
nature.
In the Gospel reading today, we heard Jesus declare that he
is the vine and we are the branches.
This is a very rich image. A
vine, like any plant, needs both the trunk and the branches to grow and to
continue living. Each plant has only one
trunk but a variety of branches. In
using this image Jesus is giving us an image of the Church. He is the vine, the trunk which, with its
roots, penetrates down into the soil to extract water and minerals from the
ground so as to be the source of life to the branches. And we are the branches, who extend ourselves
out into the world to absorb what is good in it, like leaves absorb the rays of
the sun, so as to provide growth to the vine and to produce its fruit. The deep roots of the vine and the great
diversity in shape and size of the branches is what makes the vine strong:
allowing it to endure changing conditions so that it may continue to grow and
produce fruit.
In spite of this very organic ideal, however, we still face
the same debilities of human weakness that limited the early Church. Human nature has been redeemed, but it hasn’t
changed. In spite of our best efforts,
we still struggle to accept varied expressions of the one faith that we
received in baptism. Sometimes this is
limited by the barrier of language; other times, there are more aesthetic
barriers: the music, the preaching, our particular devotions, etc. Our human weaknesses keep us from seeing that,
as branches on the vine, we are rich and healthy because of our diversity; instead, we convince ourselves that we
are limited by it.
So, how do we overcome these limitations? I suggest that we stop talking and start
acting. A number of years ago, I was a
leader for my parish’s youth mission trip.
As we prepared to leave for the trip, I took note of how the Hispanic youth
were all huddled together at one end of the sidewalk and the Anglo youth were
huddled together on the other side. Before
we left I told them that I wasn’t going to let them be separated like that
throughout the whole trip. In other
words, I would expect them to mix together.
Little did I know that God already had a plan. As these youth traveled together, prayed
together, worked together, and served together, the Hispanic/Anglo differences
seemed to melt away. By the last night
of the trip, there was no way to distinguish one group from the other: they had
mixed together completely. You see, when
they stopped worrying about who they were standing by and instead focused on
the acts of love that they were given to do, they no longer paid attention to
their differences and preferences; rather, they allowed those to fade into the
background.
In the second reading today, we heard Saint John invite us
to “love not in word or speech but in deed and truth.” In other words, he is saying that our love
must be expressed in works, not just words, if it is to be true. And, from what I saw on that youth mission
trip, love expressed in deeds makes us blind to our differences because we are
focused instead on extending our branches and producing fruit. Thus, if our communities (that is, our
family, our parish, our city, etc.) are struggling to be united, then perhaps
we need to focus more on doing the work of building God’s kingdom: that is, the
work of serving the needs of others; because it is in doing those works that we
will look past our differences; and it is in doing those works that we will
know that we belong to the truth; and it is in doing those works that we will
be united in the Heart of Jesus.
My brothers and sisters, we—the Catholic Community of Saint Paul
in Marion—are the branch on the vine extended out into this place in order to
bear fruit so that the vine will be strengthened and will continue to grow. And what a privilege it is to be part of this
vine! Jesus is the Vine that gives life! Life!!!
And, from his gratuitous love for us, the Father has grafted us—dead
branches that we were—onto this vine so that we might have life! So that, through his life in us, we might be the
means by which his life is shared with others.
My brothers and sisters, no gift could ever be more valuable than this! Our response, therefore, must be to believe in
him and to work so as to bear the fruit that his life produces in us.
Friends, the abundance of diversity in our community means
that there is great potential for a rich harvest. Saint Joseph, whom we celebrate under the
title of “the Worker” on the first of May, is a wonderful model of how doing the
good works that are available to you can produce great fruits. Let us, then, follow his example and boldly
engage in these good works so that, rather than being cut off and thrown into
the fire like the branches that produce no fruit, we might be fruitful branches
that are pruned so as to produce fruit even more abundantly: fruit by which God
our heavenly Father will be truly glorified.
Given in Spanish at Saint Paul
parish: Marion, IN – May 1st, 2021
Given in Spanish at Saint Patrick
parish: Kokomo, IN – May 2nd, 2021
No comments:
Post a Comment