The Tale of Two Fruit Plants

 Deacon Kevin Gingras

April 28, 2024

Fifth Sunday of Easter

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/042824.cfm

Acts 9:26-31      Ps 22:26-27, 28, 30, 31-32

1 Jn 3:18-24    Jn 15:1-8

This is the tale of two fruit plants.  In my yard I have an apple tree out back and a blueberry bush out front.  The apple trees I never prune and they are now a bit out of hand - they bear bad fruit or no fruit at this point.  The blueberry bush in the front, however, I prune the dead branches and the ones that bear no fruit each year.  Because I do this we get a good crop of blueberries from it yearly.  Faith and I will pick and eat them right from the bush, you can’t get fresher than that!

Now I know nothing about pruning grape vines but back in biblical times that must have been what people were familiar with as it is so deeply rooted in the Old and New Testaments.  We hear it in Isaiah 5, The Song of The Vineyard.  We hear it in today’s Gospel as well.  We also read of it in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. In Chapter 1108:

In every liturgical action the Holy Spirit is sent in order to bring us into communion with Christ and so to form his Body. The Holy Spirit is like the sap of the Father's vine which bears fruit on its branches. 

I love that analogy.  God the Father sent his only Son into the world for our salvation.  God the Son ascended into Heaven and sent us God the Holy Spirit to give us the sap of the vine of Christ.  The nourishment we need to keep our souls alive!

Now sometimes pruning hurts.  We heard of our friend Paul, also known as Saul in today’s first reading.  He needed a lot of pruning.  Jesus spoke to him in a flash of light knocking him to the ground.  Saul was blind for three days, he didn’t eat or drink at all until Ananias healed him. Even years after his pruning and conversion the Apostles didn’t yet trust him.  Barnabas had to vouch for him.

I guess this brings the homily to us.  What do we need to prune from our lives?  What are the things that take away our sight of Jesus and how can we remove them?  Don’t worry, Jesus will help us to do this pruning, just reach out to Him. How? 

• Pray, and if you can, spend time in adoration with Jesus, and ask him to point out the dead branches in your life that need to be removed.  

• Receive the sacrament of Confession. Tell Him, in Confession, the sins you want to be pruned. Sure, sometimes some of the bad branches will grow back, and when they do go back to Confession again! 

• Receive the Eucharist in a state of grace.  When we receive the Eucharist, Christ turns us into tabernacle.  

If we do these things, along with proclaiming Christ to others Jesus will be more present to us!  In my morning prayer on Saturday  one of the intercessory prayers was:

You are present to all who preach your Gospel, and give power to their words - make us today preachers of your resurrection by our holiness in life.

You may wonder if it will work, will people come back to church because of something I say to them? A few men from the Holy Family Men’s group had sent out those flyers from one of Fr. Matt’s Homilies entitled Why Come To Mass on Sunday. We sent them out to all of you, but you attend church so our hope was you would give them to somebody you know who doesn’t go to Mass. We also sent them to parishioners on our mailing list we hadn’t seen in a while. After the 4:00 PM Mass Saturday a gentleman asked me if I was part of the Men’s ministry and wanted me to thank the men for the flyer. He said it has been 10 years since he has been to Mass and the flyer inspired him to return. Praise God! He told me “The lost sheep has been found’!

Today, upon our dismissal from Mass, our prayer should be that we go forth announcing the Gospel to the world just like St. Paul who was one of the greatest missionaries the Church has ever seen.

Mother Angelica tells us:

The Lord God has no one else but you.  You’d better get off your lead bottoms and go out there and change this pagan world!