Abide in Me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches.
Today we take a brief break from Lent to celebrate the Institution of our Holy Church 129 years ago.
The organization of our Church was fraught with dangers, risks at every level of those faithful people’s lives. They risked jobs, homes, financial security, friends, even family all for Christ and His Holy Church.
Those people and the clergy in union with them lived sacrificially and covenantially. They sought the depth and breadth of deeper union with God found through life in Jesus.
Jesus illustrates the relationship we must have with Him by pointing to what people well understood – the Vine and Branches. The Vine and Branches is not just an illustration of relationship, but also of dependence.
To be dependent means we must surrender our vaunted independence. That is hard to do. We were all taught to stand strong, be independent. In fact, we were warned against dependence. Yet Jesus calls us to dependence upon Him. That requires us to change our mindset.
Just as branches must remain connected to and dependent on the vine to bear fruit, so we must abide in Christ to experience the spiritual growth that leads us to be the very image of Christ in the world, the fruit Jesus asks us to deliver.
Being in union with Christ, remaining connected to and dependent upon Him nourishes us and continues our growth. We find in Jesus both vitality (life) and productivity (the bearing of fruit).
What is required of us is the bearing of good fruit from our union with Jesus.
To accomplish this Christ must be central in our lives, not in some second or third place, not on a shelf to be taken out Sunday morning. If there are things in our lives that push Jesus to the periphery, we must get rid of those things.
Let us pay close attention to where we live. Otherwise, what Paul told Timothy, renunciation of the faith, listening to deceit, and the barrenness of hypocrisy will take true life from us, and we will produce no good thing.
