5th Sunday of Easter (Cycle B) – May 10, 2009

Scripture Readings
First Acts 9:26-31
Second 1 John 3:18-24
Gospel John 15:1-8

Prepared by: Fr. Peter John Cameron, O.P.

1. Subject Matter
• The power of the Name of Jesus
• Belief in the Name of Jesus
• Remaining in Jesus

2. Exegetical Notes
• “Saul…had spoken out boldly in the name of Jesus:” “In order to have life, it is necessary to
believe in the name of the only Son of God, that is to say, to adhere to the person of Jesus in
acknowledging that he is the Son of God, that Son of God is the name which expresses his
true being…. The ministry of the name of Jesus is especially incumbent upon Paul: he has
received it as a charge (Acts 9:15) and a cause of suffering (Acts 9:16); he nevertheless
fulfills his mission with daring and pride, for he had pledged his life to the name of our Lord
Jesus Christ (Acts 15:26) and is ready to die for him” (Xavier Leon-Dufour).
• “His commandment is this: we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ:” “Keeping
God’s commandments is not a human work that ‘earns’ divine life (the deepest level of
interiority), but is rather the fruit in the believer of yielding to the interior word (the conscious
level of interiority) that brings the truth to action.” (Francis Martin)
• “I am the vine, you are the branches…. Without me you can do nothing:” “The necessity for
the Christian to remain united with Christ is stressed by the frequent repetition of the word
‘remain’ or ‘abide’, (Greek: meno) which occurs ten times in ten verses…. The ‘remaining’ of
the faithful in Christ is a union of love, and the love of Jesus for those who are his is like the
love of the Father for him…. ‘Remaining in love’ is explained on the level of practical
realization: It is manifested in carrying out the will of the beloved.” (Sofia Cavalletti)
3. References to the Catechism of the Catholic Church
• 432 The name "Jesus" signifies that the very name of God is present in the person of his
Son, made man for the universal and definitive redemption from sins. It is the divine name
that alone brings salvation, and henceforth all can invoke his name, for Jesus united himself
to all men through his Incarnation, so that "there is no other name under heaven given
among men by which we must be saved."
• 434 Jesus' Resurrection glorifies the name of the Savior God, for from that time on it is the
name of Jesus that fully manifests the supreme power of the "name which is above every
name".The evil spirits fear his name; in his name his disciples perform miracles, for the
Father grants all they ask in this name.
• 2666 But the one name that contains everything is the one that the Son of God received in
his incarnation: JESUS. The divine name may not be spoken by human lips, but by assuming
our humanity The Word of God hands it over to us and we can invoke it: "Jesus," "YHWH
saves." The name "Jesus" contains all: God and man and the whole economy of creation
and salvation. To pray "Jesus" is to invoke him and to call him within us. His name is the only
one that contains the presence it signifies. Jesus is the Risen One, and whoever invokes the
name of Jesus is welcoming the Son of God who loved him and who gave himself up for him.
• 202 Jesus himself affirms that God is "the one Lord" whom you must love "with all your
heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength". At the same
time Jesus gives us to understand that he himself is "the Lord". To confess that Jesus is Lord
is distinctive of Christian faith. This is not contrary to belief in the One God.
• 787 From the beginning, Jesus associated his disciples with his own life, revealed the
mystery of the Kingdom to them, and gave them a share in his mission, joy, and sufferings.
Jesus spoke of a still more intimate communion between him and those who would follow
him: "Abide in me, and I in you. . . . I am the vine, you are the branches." And he proclaimed
a mysterious and real communion between his own body and ours: "He who eats my flesh
and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him."
• 2074 Jesus says: "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him,
he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing." The fruit referred to in
this saying is the holiness of a life made fruitful by union with Christ. When we believe in
Jesus Christ, partake of his mysteries, and keep his commandments, the Savior himself
comes to love, in us, his Father and his brethren, our Father and our brethren. His person
becomes, through the Spirit, the living and interior rule of our activity. "This is my
commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you."
•
4. Patristic Commentary and Other Authorities
• St. Augustine: For we cultivate God, and God cultivates us. But our culture of God does not
make Him better: our culture is that of adoration, not of plowing: His culture of us makes us
better. His culture consists in extirpating all the seeds of wickedness from our hearts, in
opening our heart to the plow, as it were, of His word, in sowing in us the seeds of His
commandments, in waiting for the fruits of piety.
• St. John Chrysostom: And forasmuch as Christ was sufficient for Himself, but His disciples
needed the help of the Husbandman, of the vine He says nothing, but adds concerning the
 branches, Every branch in Me that bears not fruit, He takes away. By fruit is meant life, i.e.
that no one can be in Him without good works.
• St. Thomas Aquinas: “Christ says, ‘Every branch,’ that is every Christian, ‘not bearing fruit’
namely in the vine, ‘in me,’ without Whose aid no one or no thing can bear fruit; ‘he will take
away,’ take him away from the vine. For although a man is well disposed and united to God,
still if his affections are bent on diverse and trifling things, his power is weakened and he is
rendered less effective to do good. And hence it is that God, to make us productive of good,
often cuts off from us and purges us of similar impediments by sending us tribulations and
temptations, which if we overcome, we become stronger in the performance of good and
therefore, it is rightly said, ‘he purges man,’ even if a man should be pure, for no man in this
life is so pure but he may be more and more purified.”
• St. Catherine of Siena: “Each of you has your own vineyard, your soul, in which your free will
is the appointed worker during this life. You must first rouse yourself to heartfelt contrition,
contempt for sin, and love for virtue. Otherwise you will not have done your part to be fit to be
joined as branches to the vine that is my only-begotten Son. That is not how my servants act,
and you should be like them, joined and engrafted to this vine. Then you will produce much
fruit, because you will share the vital sap of the vine. And being in the Word, my Son, you will
be in me, for I am one with him and he with me. If you are in him you will follow his teaching,
and if you follow his teaching you will share in the very being of this Word – that is, you will
share in the eternal Godhead made one with humanity, whence you will draw that divine love
which inebriates the soul. All this I mean when I say that you will share in the very substance
of the vine.”
• St. Therese of Lisieux: “Deign to unite me to you, Holy and sacred Vine,/ and my weak
branch will give you its fruit,/ And I’ll be able to offer you a cluster of golden grapes/ Lord,
from today on./ I’ve just this fleeting day to form/This cluster of love, whose seeds are
souls./Ah! give me, Jesus, the fire of an Apostle/Just for today.”
• Venerable John Henry Newman: “The greatest acknowledgement we can make of the
kindness of a superior is to say that he acts as if he were personally interested in us. The
mass of benevolent men are kind and generous, because it is their way to be so,
irrespectively of the person whom they benefit. Natural temper, a flow of spirits, or a turn of
good fortune, opens the heart, which pours itself out profusely on friend and enemy. They
scatter benefits as they move along. Now, at first sight, it is difficult to see how our idea of
Almighty God can be divested of these earthly notions, either that his goodness is imperfect,
or that it is fated and necessary; and wonderful indeed, and adorable is the condescension
by which he has met our infirmity. He has met and aided it in that same dispensation by
which he redeemed our souls. In order that we may understand that in spite of his mysterious
perfections he has a separate knowledge and regard for individuals, he has taken upon him
the thoughts and feelings of our own nature, which we all understand is capable of such
personal attachments. By becoming man, he has cut short the perplexities and the
discussions of our reason on the subject, as if he would grant our objections for argument’s
sake, and supersede them by taking our own ground.”
• Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar: “Why do you rush on to deed and achievement? I am the vine; it
is I who achieve. What is your deed if it is not to ripen? Let my sap rise up within you that you
may hang heavy and golden. Then will the chaotic dream of deeds dreamt by the shoots in
the springtime, then will the leaves’ proud summer craze, then will all earth’s work become
 ripe within your little taut spheres. You can bear in yourselves the meaning of the earth, but
only through me. Once I entered the world, a new and unknown sap began to circulate in the
veins and branches of nature. My action is not grafted from without to the old life, to the old
pleasure-gardens of Pan; being the very life of life, I transform the marrow from within. All
that dies becomes the property of my life. I am not one of the resurrected; I am the
resurrection itself.”
• Jean Vanier: “This is something very deep and intimate in the heart of Jesus. He is saying
something to the people which is a very secret reality. He wants to tell them, ‘I love you so
much, I want to live in you.’ To love is to live in another person, and to carry that person in
one. Love is a unity between people, a unity of sentiment and thought. Jesus says: ‘Abide in
me as the branch abides in the vine. Abide.” This is what love is all about. To love is to abide.
The lover wants to abide in the loved one as he carries the loved on in his heart.”
• Msgr. Luigi Giussani: “We are living; therefore, we have arisen from the grave of
nothingness. Our life is not an undefined stream, but a design. Fruitfulness is sharing in the
construction of this life, entering it to intensify the flow of life. The image of one’s own life is
the image of the Other; the image of one’s own face is the image of another Face; the image
of one’s own creative energy is the image of that of the Other. We sacrifice our everyday self
to this design for the authenticity of living, of creating, of being fruitful. Fount of life, source of
humanity, source of the ultimate design of the world: fruitfulness is of Christ. We have been
called to the most radical form of fruitfulness.”
• Fr. Andre Louf: “True, we can pretend we are doing something and utter words we ourselves
have dreamed up or start the umpteenth project of our own invention. We can improvise an
unprecedented prayer and think we are very original. But the words will never be those which
Jesus would have put on our lips, nor will the deeds be those which Jesus would have
wanted to inspire in us, nor will it be the prayer that he had already begun to pray deep within
us. We do not hear him, simply because we have not remained in him, separated as we are
from Jesus, our vine. We do from time to time ask for an explanation for what Jesus calls
‘withering.’ And many others notice this as well. For despite all the clever maneuvers and the
nervous gestures which proceed from our good intentions, we come across as very
unconvincing. The grapes growing on our branches are green and often very tart. Still it is
enough to continue believing in Jesus, like the branch which remains in the vine, to bear
abundant fruit, fruit the Father himself intended for us that they might reveal his glory: ‘My
Father is glorified by this that you bear much fruit.’ Spontaneous fruitbearing, without effort,
as the product of a spring which is the life of Jesus, is lodged deeply within us. What
exertions would the branch itself have to make to let grapes grow and ripen to maturity? It is
enough simply to let the sap rise up for as long as it remains united to the vine. So we, too,
must remain united with Jesus in the depths of our heart.”

5. Examples from the Saints and Other Exemplars

• Regarding the unity between Christ and his believers, between the vine and the branches:
St. Joan of Arc on trial said to her judges: “About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know
they're just one thing, and we shouldn't complicate the matter.” (see CCC 795)
• The intimate unity between the vine and the branches that Jesus promises is in fact a
response to something that the human heart craves, as this poem by Rainer Maria Rilke
expresses:
Put out my eyes:
I still can see You;
deprive my ears of sound:
I still can hear You;
and without feet
I still can come to You;
and without voice
I still can call to You.
Break off my arms from me,
I still will take hold You
and grasp You with all my heart as with a single hand;
arrest my heart,
my brain will keep on beating;
and should your fire
at last, my brain consume,
the flowing of my blood will carry You.

6. Quotations from Pope Benedict XVI

• Being baptized means assuming the name of Christ, means becoming a son with and in him.
The demand made by the name into which one here enters is more radical than the demand
of any earthly name can be. It attacks the roots of our autonomy more deeply than the
deepest earthly bond can do. For it demands that our existence become “sonlike”, that we
belong so totally to God that we become an “attribute” of God. And as sons we are to
acknowledge so totally that we belong to Christ that we know ourselves to be one flesh, “one
body”, with all his brethren. Baptism means, then, that we lose ourselves as a separate,
independent “I” and find ourselves again in a new “I.”
• Faith is seen not as the mere acceptance of certain propositions, but is the seed of life within
me. I am only a true believer if faith is present within me as a living seed, from which
something is growing and which then truly changes my world and, in doing so, brings
something new into the world as a whole. The experiment of life can only become clear for
me if I truly give myself up to the will of God, so far as he has made it known to me.
• In reality, for the believing Christian the words “I believe” articulate a kind of certainty that is
in many respects a higher degree of certainty than that of science yet one that does indeed
carry within it the dynamic of the “not yet”…. Just as a person becomes certain of another’s
love without being able to subject it to the methods of scientific experiment, so in the contact
between God and man there is a certainty of a quite different kind from the certainty of
objectivizing thought. We live faith, not as a hypothesis, but as the certainty on which our life
is based…. Belief is certainty that God has shown himself and has opened up for us the view
of truth itself…. In the act of believing the assent comes about in a different way from the way
it does in the act of knowing: not through the degree of evidence bringing the process of
thought to its conclusion, but by an act of will, in connection with which the thought process
remains open and still under way. Here the will commands assent, even though the thought
process is still under way….. We are able to give the assent of faith because the will—the
 heart—has been touched by God, “affected” by him. Through being touched in this way, the
will knows that even what is still not “clear” to the reason is true.
• Only if we let ourselves be cleansed of the corruptibility of the “I” and come thus gradually to
live by God, to be united with God, do we come to a true inner freedom of judgment, to a
fearless independence of thinking and deciding, that no longer cares about the approval or
disapproval of others but clings only to truth. Such a purification is always a process of
opening oneself and, at the same time, of receiving oneself. It cannot take place without the
suffering of the vine that is pruned. But it makes possible the only form of power that leads,
not to slavery, but to freedom.
• Christ himself became the vine, and this vine always bears good fruit: the presence of his
love for us which is indestructible. From this death springs life, because Jesus transformed it
into a sacrificial gesture, an act of love, thereby profoundly changing it: love has overcome
death. In the Holy Eucharist, from the cross, he draws us all to himself (cf. Jn 12: 32) and
makes us branches of the Vine that is Christ himself. If we abide in him, we will also bear
fruit, and then from us will no longer come the vinegar of self-sufficiency, of dissatisfaction
with God and his creation, but the good wine of joy in God and of love for our neighbor.

7. Other Considerations
• It certainly is not a coincidence that the first parable which Jesus tells in the Gospels is the
parable of the sower and the seed (Mk 4:1-20) and the last “parable” which he tells, the night
before he dies, is in effect the fulfillment of that parable: the parable of the vine and the
branches. The fruitfulness that began through the union of “good soil” with seed/Word will
now reach its culmination. The seed has become the vine. Those who have received the
Seed—“listening to the Word and taking it to heart”—begin to experience the hundredfold
harvest in the promise of abiding union as branches of the vine.

Recommended Resources

Benedict XVI, Pope. Benedictus. Yonkers: Magnificat, 2006.

Biblia Clerus: http://www.clerus.org/bibliaclerus/index_eng.html

Cameron, Peter John. To Praise, To Bless, To Preach—Cycle B. Huntington: Our Sunday

Visitor, 1999.

Hahn, Scott:
http://www.salvationhistory.com/library/scripture/churchandbible/homilyhelps/homilyhelps.cfm.

Martin, Francis: http://www.hasnehmedia.com/homilies.shtml