Contents: Volume 2

5th SUNDAY of EASTER (B)

- 4/28/2024

1. -- Lanie LeBlanc OP
2. -- Dennis Keller
3. -- John Boll OP
4. --
5. --(Your reflection can be here!)

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5th Sunday of Easter 2024

In this day and age, it can often feel difficult to stay connected to the Vine. Sometimes, situations occur such as scrambling to help a modern day version of an outsider or a divergent thinker like Saul was. One can also feel rather withered or a bit sensitive from a pruning. Then what? Then you take a breath and feel the breath of the Holy Spirit!

It is the Holy Spirit who brought peace to the early church when conflicts occurred. It is the same Holy Spirit, no matter the name invoked by whom, who is alive in the world today to bring guidance, peace, and compassion to each of us. Our Triune God indeed is greater than our worried hearts and does know us better than we know ourselves. Without the help of the Holy Spirit, we can do nothing, however, but remain downtrodden, helpless wanderers who are indeed lost.

Thanks to the One who is all knowing, all loving, all powerful, and so very merciful, however, all of us who wander are not lost. Before Pentecost arrives, try this: find the time to slow down and notice when you are breathing heavily. Invoke the Holy Spirit to restore calmer breathing. Remember that the Holy Spirit is within you at every breath you take.

Let us pray that by Pentecost, we will have revived our acquaintance with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is always available so that we can ask for and receive the nourishment that will help us stay connected to the Vine and, as branches, flourish and bear good fruit.

Blessings,
Dr. Lanie LeBlanc OP
Southern Dominican Laity
lanie@leblanc.one

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Fifth Sunday of Easter April 28, 2024

Acts 9:26-31; Responsorial Psalm 22; 1st John 3:18-24;
Gospel Acclamation John 15:4, 5; John 15:1-8

Whenever we move to a new city, start a new job, begin a course of study, register at a new parish, there is a period of time when we struggle to gain acceptance and become a trusted person. In the first reading this Sunday from Acts of the Apostles, Paul had that very experience. He must have been grateful to Barnabas who introduced him around and vouched for him. The community in Jerusalem accepted him and eventually held him dear. When the Hellenists wanted to kill him, his newfound friends spirited him away to Caesarea and from there to his birthplace of Tarsus in Turkey. After this threat, Luke writes that the church in Judea, Galilee, and Samaria were at peace and the church grew in numbers with the consolation of the Holy Spirit. That is an amazing statement. Judeans looked down on Galileans. Galileans and Judeans looked down on Samaritans. What a seismic change when cultures lose their power to control human behavior. Is this a post-resurrection miracle? This is certainly a result of the teaching, healing, and death and resurrection. Love removed the violence of competition and pursuit of wealth, power, and fame – well for a while.

The second reading is from John’s first letter. It speaks of having confidence in God and following God’s commandments. He spells out what God commands: we are to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ and love one another in deed and truth.

Those two readings set up the gospel selected for this fifth Sunday of Easter. This is the Sunday of the Vine and the Branches. Jesus names himself the vine on which all branches adhere. The Father is the vinedresser. We are the branches.

The branches we are, form a community of branches – of persons. Paul, with his reputation of being a persecutor of Christians, remade his reputation after hearing the voice of the Lord calling him to repentance. He studied, fasted, prayed, and took the teaching and experience of Ananias and the community in Damascus. After three years he traveled to Jerusalem to check if his understanding and teaching to the community in Damacus was true to the teaching of Jesus. The followers of Jesus in Jerusalem were fearful of him, remembering his witness to the death of the deacon Stephen. Only when Barnabas vouched for him did he become part of the community in Jerusalem. When he became part of that community, they supported him and protected him from the Hellenists.

We become part of a community with Baptism. Becoming part of the community brings us in contact with Jesus. By staying connected to the vine we have access to drink and food for healing, for nourishment, and for remaining connected to the vine. The vine keeper, the Father, prunes us from time to time, using the forces that strike us from nature, from wild beasts, from storms and hail. Pruning teaches us obedience. Obedience keeps us attached to the vine. Suffering is a pruning that helps us bear much fruit. What does this much fruit mean? The fruit can be applied to the spread and growth of the Kingdom of God. By our actions – in deed and in truth – we bring to our place and time the message of love and righteousness.

But that cannot happen unless we remain on the vine, unless we remain in Jesus. We remain with Jesus by our prayers, by acceptance of suffering that comes to us because of nature or because of the actions of bad willed persons. Such suffering is being pruned and being supported by the Father in finding solutions and in enduring pain and anxiety as a joining with Jesus in his suffering. We stay connected by worshipping with the community of branches. The juice that fosters and supports our healing, our growth, and strengthening our attachment to the vine is from the Holy Spirit – what we commonly identify as grace. Jesus maintained his union with the Father in love and keeping to the Will of the Father. When branches remain in Jesus, disciples are grafted into the love of Jesus for the Father; disciples share in that love by obeying the commands of God and practicing love of others.

In the first reading this Sunday, John tells how we love others. This is no mere feeling, no mere emotional connection. This love is in deeds done for others and in truth of what and who we are. Wondering what John means when he attaches “truth” to love of others by doing for them, this “truth” is about right behavior. When humanity was created, there was no sin, only “right” living. With the envy of Satan, there came evil as a choice for humans. Evil is wrong living and a lie.

To love in deeds and in truth makes the Glory of the Father present in time and place. The Glory of God is what is experienced when God is present. When we are grafted onto the vine that is the Lord, we are included into the Christ. We become cells in the Mystical Body of the Christ. We belong, we share, we gain strength and vitality from that association. We are no longer strangers to each other. We are then children of God and sisters and brothers to one another.

Dennis Keller Dennis@PreacherExchange.com

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2024-04-28 some reflections on the Gospel
Fifth Sunday of Easter Year B

Have you ever tried to make toast? you put the slices in the toaster, pushed down on the lever and come back and nothing happened? What is the first thing you check?

Or you grab the hose to water your plants, turn on the nozzle and nothing comes out?
What do you do next?

Or have you ever pulled out your phone, tried to make a phone call or text, and it doesn’t happen?
You get a warning message, “hey – you are not connected... and discover you are still on “Airplane mode”!

It is essential to be plugged into the Source! And stay conected “Because without me you can do nothing.”

Jesus uses the image of a Vine and Branches, to illustrate this:
“Jesus said to his disciples:
‘I am the true vine ...
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.’ ”

It is kind of hard to miss the central point of Jesus’ teaching in this Gospel.
It is Summed up in one word. “REMAIN”!
He uses the word 8 times in these verses.
I imagine he really wants to get the point across!
Probably makes sense, as he is speaking here at the Last Supper, just before his Death.
His disciples will need a word of encouragement;
and eventually strength and empowerment!

“REMAIN in me, as I remain in you.” is not just advice, it is essential!
It is of the essence of who we are.

What is translated here as “Remain” has deep and profound meaning in the bible.
It helps to know there are many translations of the Greek and Hebrew word behind the “remain” of our translation: and serves to point to the importance to remain in Jesus.

“Remain” “Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood remains in Me, and I in them.”

“Stay” Jesus first two disciples in John’s Gospel ask Jesus, “where are you staying”

Abide “And now my children, abide in him, that when he is revealed, we shall not be ashamed before him, but we shall have boldness at his arrival.”

Dwell “The word became flesh and dwelt among us”

Continue “Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If you continue in my word, then you are my disciples indeed”

The importance is this: To Remain is of the essence of God. Who is an indwelling of persons, that is revealed as relationship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The divine life is the source that creates us and in which we have life and are empowered to grow and bear fruit (live into fulfillment)

To separate from this source is to run out of the energy of life and wither, and cut ourselves away from the vine.
to restrict the flow of life from God will leave us weak and suffering, in need of prunning.
To go over to a False Vine, is to lose our connection with the True source of our life.

The nature of this life is seen in the fruit of loving others into life.
As the triune God did in creating us,
as the divine Word did in emptying itself to become one with us.
And as Jesus shows us in the giving of his living and dying, that we might have life.

So it is essential we remain, abide, stay, continue, live, and dwell in the vine.
Allowing the Vine Grower
to re-graft us in onto the vine when we find ourselves separated,
to prune what blocks the flow of divine life within and through us,
reshaping us into healthy fruitful branches that bare the much fruit in love

John Boll, OP

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Volume 2 is for you. Your thoughts, reflections, and insights on the next Sundays readings can influence the preaching you hear. Send them to preacherexchange@att.net. Deadline is Wednesday Noon. Include your Name, and Email Address.

-- Fr. John Boll, OP

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