Fifth Sunday of Easter (Year B)

Fifth Sunday of Easter (Year B)

Acts 9:26-31; 1Jn 3:18-24; Jn 15: 1-8

Image Courtesy: Mangalore Diocese

A young man who found an eagle’s egg and put it into the nest of a prairie chicken. The eaglet hatched with the brood of prairie chickens and grew up with them. All its life, the misplaced eagle thought it was a prairie chicken and did only what the prairie chickens did. It scratched in the dirt for seeds and insects to eat. And it flew no more than a few feet off the ground with a thrashing of wings like other prairie chickens. Years passed and the unfortunate eagle grew very old. One day, it saw a magnificent bird high above in the cloudless sky. Hanging with graceful majesty on the powerful wind currents, it soared gracefully on its strong golden wings. “What a beautiful bird!” said the unfortunate eagle to its neighbour. “That’s an eagle, the chief of the birds,” the neighbour replied, “But don’t give it a second thought. You could never be like him.” So the poor eagle never gave it a second thought and it died thinking it was a prairie chicken.

Dear friends, unless we realise who we really are, we may simply vanish from the face of the earth just like that eagle. 

There are two key images of relationship in today’s readings: the image or metaphor of the vine and branches in the Gospel reading focuses on our relationship with Jesus, the image or metaphor of the household (God as parent, we as children) in the first letter of John focuses more on our relationship with the Father. Each dwells on an important outcome of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

The metaphor of the vine/vineyard is well used and developed in the Old Testament. One of the most famous examples is the song of the vineyard in Isaiah 5:1–7. God expected the vineyard of Israel to yield choice grapes (justice and righteousness) but found wild grapes instead (bloodshed, the cry of distress). 

There are many instances where Vine and Vineyard is used to make the Israelites realise the purpose of God in making them one with him again and again. 

The readings of today are oriented towards Pentecost, wherein we are invited to remain one with the Risen Lord, so as to bear much fruit in our life. 

The verse … “WITHOUT ME, YOU CAN DO NOTHING!” grips my attention. I have seen people doing extremely well without acknowledging God in their life. You too might have experienced the same. If you also notice, the people who once did so well, face a downfall at some point in their life. Therefore, the questions we need to ask are, Without Christ I can do so many things, and I can bear much fruit. Are those fruits worthy for building the Kingdom of God? Or have I built my own kingdom in and around me? 

If I abide in my Lord, I can bear much fruit that is worthy of building the Kingdom of God in and around me. 

We are in the most difficult situation of our life. Once again pandemic is back with new variant and seems to be much dangerous. On the one hand people are crying and looking for help and on the other, we have super rich people who need no help of anyone. They have built kingdom of their own. We know from the scripture that our God never keeps silence when the poor cry out to him for help. Our work today is to abide in our Lord and trust in his mercy and compassion. We are called today to bear fruit by our lives in reaching out the needy. Our actions become acts of Christian discipleship when our acts are motivated by our relationship with our Lord. 

Someone recently asked me, “No Mass, No Sacraments, what is Christian living now?” I took some time to reflect. It is true. Everything is uncertain. We have learnt the Christian theory of Love and Service during our Sunday services. During this extraordinary situation let us allow God’s Word to bear fruit in us. God has given us this time to put into action all the theories of Christian living. Let us now put into action one by one. This is what we truly are. We are children of God by our actions.  

(You are most welcome to add your thoughts and reflections in the comment section below. )

Happy Sunday