For a little over 5 years, I lived right here on the parish grounds in the building you see on the east parking lot. It was nice place with a good size back yard which boasted a citrus tree, flowers and a grape arbor. The grape arbor, which is still there, was apparently planted by Vince Petrucci from Fresno State for Fr. Negro. There are four vines which come together to form an umbrella of shade under that arbor.
But while that arbor looked beautiful from a distance, when you got close to it you could see the number of dead branches that were hiding under the newer growth. Not only that, but some of the branches were diseased— and had become home to ants, termites and more. The real measure of the health of the vines were the wild and immature grapes that appeared every season. They were not edible because the vine, as nice as it looked, wasn’t being cared for and didn’t produce good fruit. Eventually, I invited a person to come over and trim those vines back. When he was done, he had a pile of dead branches that had to be disposed of. To me, it appeared that he had gone too far in pruning back those vines. But, a few weeks later, you could already see that new blossoms and leaves were appearing.
That arbor is an interesting metaphor for the spiritual life that many of us have. That is, on the outside, our spiritual lives may appear to be healthy. Everything is going well, we think. But deep down inside, we are not healthy. Something is amiss in our spiritual lives. We aren’t happy. We have worries, anxieties and little peace of mind or heart. Our minds are cluttered with lots of dead branches, so to speak. With all of this weighing on us, we may feel that we are simply going through the motions of our spiritual practices. But we still feel empty and unproductive.
For some people, the first signs of a weakened spiritual life comes in relationships. There are tensions in marriage or with other family members. We can’t seem to put our finger on the exact problem but we feel it. From a distance, others may say, “What a healthy family!” or “What a healthy marriage! Don’t they look happy?” People may see us and our loved ones in Church every week. However, looks can be deceiving. We know that things often aren’t as they appear.
A weakened spiritual life may make itself known in our prayer life or, perhaps we should say, the lack of a prayer life. It seems that we can manage not praying over a long period of time. But, eventually, we sense that we are off track and that there is a void within us. We haven’t really spoken to God about anything recently. Sometimes we may feel that it is God who is ignoring us and not speaking to us.
Another sign of a weakened spiritual life comes when we just don’t seem to care too much for being involved in anything other than the basic routines of spirituality. Yes, we go to Church; we contribute, we may even say prayers each day. But, we feel little connection with the larger community. We’re so busy tending to our own needs that we have little care— even apathy— for the plight of the needy or poor.
In so many ways, we are like that grape arbor which seems, outwardly, to be doing OK. However, a closer look reveals that it is barely alive. It is a shell of what it can really be. In the same way, we have so much potential but can’t seem to move deeper to address the issues that are weighing us down.
Jesus offers a remedy for this general spiritual malaise that can afflict us.
In the Gospel today, he says, “I am the vine, you are the branches. You cannot bear fruit apart from me. You must remain attached to me.” He also tells us that the Father [God] is the vinedresser who must sometimes prune away dead branches so that the vine can preserve it’s life-giving sap to the branches that are healthy. In other words, without remaining attached to Jesus and without allowing God to prune back what is unhealthy, we cannot bear fruit. We will die on the vine, so to speak.
So, what does it mean to stay attached to Christ? And what does it mean when we say that we must allow God to prune away the dead branches in our lives?
Staying attached to Christ means that we must have a prayer life. And that prayer life must be consistent. We need to worship regularly; we need to receive the Eucharist frequently. We need to drink deeply and often from the wellspring of the Sacraments. We also need to develop a personal prayer life where we can commune with God each day. In our prayer, we lay our needs before the Lord and ask for the divine assistance that only God can give.
This is something that I realized a few years into my priesthood. I thought that, perhaps, by saying Mass everyday I was doing what I needed to do to remain spiritually alive. But I found that saying Mass was not everything that I needed to be doing. Over time, it became a chore— a job I had to fulfill— and I was still feeling empty inside. Eventually, I learned that I had to have my own private prayer life. I had to find time each day to sit with the Lord and talk directly from the heart. As I learned how to make time to do this each day, I found that I felt better about myself. Things began falling into place for me. I felt a surge of life and energy that carried me through the week. I also found that, with regular prayer time, I tended to worry less and reduced the general level of anxiety. I simply felt that I could let go of some things that were weighing me down. Nothing compensates for the lack of personal prayer. For me, that is what it meant to stay attached to the vine. And when I wasn’t attached for lack of prayer, I felt it. I knew something was not right deep within me.
I also found a stronger attachment to Christ in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. I would sometimes go for a year without asking forgiveness for my own sins. While I thought that I could simply put these sins aside, I realized that they were still there like dead branches which did nothing except weigh me down. In the Sacrament of Reconciliation, I was able to acknowledge the presence of those dead branches and ask God to remove them from my life. For many of us those dead branches take the form of unhealthy patterns of behavior, bad habits, even past events which have been pushed deeper within us. By opening my heart to another priest in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, I was able to expose those things that were dead but still taking energy and life from me. Slowly, with God’s help, those dead branches could be pruned back so that I could move forward and experience new spiritual growth and energy.
Getting rid of dead branches also occurs when we make tough decisions about our life. Things that are weighing us down sometimes have to be radically pruned back. Changing our priorities, abandoning certain types of behavior, even making a clean sweep in our lives can be painful. We may think that we can be spiritually healthy and still carry those dead branches. Yet, we will find that those dead branches, if allowed to remain attached to the vine, can do us more damage than good. They can eventually become diseased and affect what is healthy about us. Better, then, to rid ourselves of what needs to be pruned and thrown away. God can do this for us but we must be willing to give God ample room and freedom to do what needs to be done. Once we ask the Lord to begin this pruning process, we must cooperate with it and be willing to embrace what changes need to be made.
The result of a strengthened personal prayer life and an ongoing pruning of our lives can result in a more productive and energetic faith. We can find renewed interest and enthusiasm in things spiritual and can begin to experience, once again, the joy and inner peace that comes with remaining close to the vine who is Jesus. This takes time but it can happen.
So, as we listen to the words of Jesus today we might need to recommit ourselves to draw closer to the Lord in our prayer and to allow him to deal with anything that is preventing us from new growth. As he says in the Gospel, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.”
May each of us become like fruitful branches attached to the vine and producing an abundant harvest for God, for ourselves and for others.