2024 FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER (Cycle B – usus recentior)
27/28 April
Of vines and wines: Celebrating the Lord’s Goodness
The First Reading provides us with mention, though little detail, of a cultural clash between the new Christians (formerly Jews) and the Hellenists (the Greek pagans) after the arrival of the former Jew and former persecutor, Saul, had become Paul. He came among them preaching, making an attempt to proclaim the truth of the One True God, Who Saint Paul had recently come to believe was perfectly revealed in Jesus. But even the Christians had a hard time believing that Saul-was-persecutor was now Paul-the-preacher – until he spoke of his Lord, and they were convinced of his faith.
The Greeks and the Jews were a tougher audience. The Greeks initially rejected his message, especially when we spoke about the Resurrection. It was contrary to reason (and their logos, philosophy), on the one hand, and not a very intriguing story (unlike their mythos) on the other, with its tales of the gods and heroes out of which their system of philosophy had arisen. The Jews didn’t like his preaching very much either: was Saint Paul really claiming that the Galilean was actually the Son of God? If so, he was also a blasphemer and should be put to death.
Apart from their initial rejection of Saint Paul, was there anything else that united the Jews and the Greeks?
TO HIDE, TO SEEK… AND TO BE FOUND OUT
Both Jews and Greeks had a deeply ingrained religious sense, seeking something outside of themselves. This transcendent imperative had the Greeks seeking for meaning in the pagan and Olympian deities; they were slowly abandoning the old myths in favour of the logic of philosophical thought. The sedate religion of ancient Rome – which shared many features with them – was more appealing to them in the first century anyway. But the Jews understood that their sense of the “Other” was not to be fulfilled by imagination and inventive tale; they did not have to seek God out, because He had called them, small nation that they were, to be His Own people. He drew them out of slavery in Egypt and revealed Himself as the I AM, a jealous God, supreme in Heaven.
In addition to this mystical impulse, both the Greeks and the Jews were committed to a developing wisdom tradition, which had emerged over a long time. For the Jews, the wisdom was divine and practical; its source was the Lord, Who offered the Israelites many counsels on how to live a holy life, especially in the Book of Proverbs. The Jews characterised Wisdom as a companion of God, there with Him from the beginning, and by whose influence the priests, prophets and kings could rule with the very mind of God Himself. For the Greeks, emerging from their story-telling tradition, the drive to rational discourse and the rise of western philosophy promoted a thoughtful consider of man, the world in which he finds himself and how he could discover his purpose and end. It posed important questions about his place in society, and how best he could be a member of the polis, the city-state. The thought of the Greeks appeared to be more sophisticated than the saying-collections of the Jews. But both the divinely-inspired wisdom, and the rationality of the Greeks, would play an important part in preparing the world for Wisdom-Incarnate, the Logos-made-flesh, Who would come to save the world.
Despite the many ways in which the cultures of Jerusalem and Athens were finding common ground (especially with the Hellenisation, or “Greekifying” of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid rule) it was still quite clear to the Jews (at least!) that the gentile Greek pagans were outsiders. They were not sons of the covenant, uncircumcised and excluded. The filth of idolatry still clung to the Greeks; the Jews had abandoned it in favour of the imageless God (Who only occasionally commanded material things to be made in His favour, and for Divine Worship). The Jews remained bound to a variety of dietary laws; the Greeks ate and drank merrily, even to excess. To this latter point – of drink – we could now turn. A strange “uniter” of the cultures, and religions, was wine, the fruit of the vine.
IN VINO VERITAS?
The Greeks had had about a 3000-year head start on the Jews; the grapes brought to Palestine were likely an offering of the seafaring Phoenicians. But soon, wine became a common part of the Jewish religion and culture. The mysterious priest, Melchizedek, offers bread and wine with Abraham; the Psalms record that the Lord has given wine to cheer man’s heart; the Passover meal included a hurried draft; Our Lord Himself would spare the Cana couple embarrassment by vastly improving the contents of six stone water jars through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin.
While the Greeks used wine in their cultic worship of Dionysus, especially at Athens, where they inserted the drinking of wine into the wild fertility cults. Inebriation was the order of the day, entrusting themselves “spiritually” to whatever arose from their lowered inhibitions and heightened state. They poured out wine as a sacrifice, the sponde; if the gods answered, they were pleased, but if not, they were despondent. The Greek mind associated wine with fruitfulness, civilisation, pleasure and wealth. They drank a celebration to human earthiness.
But the Jews knew better. The One True God was not the Lord of unbridled pleasure and self-indulgence. He was the Creator and Sustainer, Who gave life to all things, and demanded of man more than a life of moderation: the Lord demanded the gift of the whole self. If rich wine was a symbol for the Jews, it was one of God’s goodness, and His undeserved kindness to a people who often abandoned the Lord Who saved them. Wine punctuated feasts, and was included in the rites of the Temple. It was an act of sacrifice to pour out a libation to the Lord, Who had “poured” Himself out into their lives. It was a prophetic sign of the Messiah, Who would be poured out for sin to redeem the wayward vine of Israel.
OF WINE, VINE AND THE DIVINE
With Isaiah (5:1-7), the Jews were called to yield more than bitterness in favour of the Lord Who had spaded the vine to protect it. The Lord, by Whose right hand the nation had been planted, was called to visit it, just as He had in Egypt when he brought the Hebrews to the Promised Land (Ps. 80:8-16). Both Jeremiah (2:21) and Ezekiel (15:1-8) remind the Chosen People to be faithful to God, like a fruitful vine. Jeremiah laments the degenerate vine that has become idolatrous; Ezekiel calls the unfaithful vine only fit for fire, to be burned.
But the Lord, Who has planted the vine, will redeem it. Amos (9:11) and Zechariah (8:12) prophesy a renewed vineyard, filled with blessings for the faithful nation. God would renew His covenant and bring it to fulfilment.
And in Whom would it be fulfilled, but Jesus?
The Lord is the True Vine, into which all of the nations of the world are graphed, both Jews and Greeks. In Him, there is the call to abandon irreligion and paganism, on the one hand, and infidelity to God’s call to live set-apart for Him, on the other. Jesus is the One in Whom all earthy, base and low passions are cured; He is the Lord Who elevates the higher longings for wisdom and truth. He has fulfilled all of the promises of God to the people of the Old Testament, extending God’s covenant of love to all people, Jew or Greek, slave or free, man or woman: all are invited to “remain in Him” and so bear good and lasting fruit.
Becoming deeply, personally united in Christ Jesus, in Whom is life and our true future, involves more than an intellectual decision to believe in Jesus, Who said clever things. It demands a change of living, actively seeking to become more like Him, and to be more united to Him. To “abide in Him”, as Saint John urges us in his First Letter and in the Gospel, makes the branches more and more indistinguishable from the whole entity, the True Vine, in whom we find our true nature and our greatest goal.
“ABIDE IN ME”
But how can this be really achieved? To live in Him, He must live in us: He has lived first in us through Holy Baptism. In this sacrament, we die to self and are born again in Him. Saint Paul reflects on this masterfully when he says that “[he] live[s] no longer, but Christ lives in” him. And because of His transforming presence within us, we become fruitful. Living each day in imitation of His virtues, and by virtue of His life within us, we grow in humility. We know that we can do nothing without Him, through Whom all that has been made was made. And trying to live like Him, we will also live for Him, bringing glory to God through our prayerfulness and our conduct, proving to be His disciples.
And once we’re “in Christ”, what next?
We must pray, daily and deliberately. In her spiritual classic, The Interior Castle, Saint Teresa of Avila compares the spiritual life to the exploration of a castle, with many rooms. To best pursue this, the saint who was canonised with our Saint Philip tells us to go down to the cellar and drink deeply of the rich wines contained there. There, we will be sure to be nourished through daily prayer in the spiritual path towards the Lord, Who offers comfort and counsel. Without daily prayer and contemplation, often “descending” into the Lord, Who has so many gifts to give us, we can never really hope to remain in Christ, Who wants us to visit Him often in prayer.
And we accept from God the “pruning” that He wills for our growth. These come in making good confessions, where He removes from us what stunts our fruitfulness. It also means accepting from the Lord, as though it were a mysterious gift, any sufferings He permits us to endure. We trust that if the Lord has allowed us to be united to the Cross of His Son, He has a work to complete in us that makes us more fruitful, more adherent to the Vine, stronger and more permanently His Own.
But we cannot escape the providence of wine in the fulfilment of the Old Covenant, now present in the New and Eternal. With the gifts of wine, and with bread, God chooses to nourish the Church in the Most Holy Eucharist. Here, the wine is not a libation over the altar, but a pouring out of Jesus’ Own life, rich and full, for our sake, on the altar. In this gift of Holy Communion, Jesus draws us to closer union with Him, Whose Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity we receive even in the smallest Crumb from the altar. This is a mark of God’s generosity: in order to bring us into Him, He allows Himself to be brought into us. His Own life mingles with our own – like the mixture of water and the wine at the Offertory – to ennoble and perfect us. The feeble water of our humanity is enhanced by the fullness of Christ’s Own Divinity, which is never diminished by union with us. We are made to be part of Him, just as He willed to become part of us in the Incarnation. And with His Own life coursing through our veins, we abide in Him because He has chosen to abide with us.
May Saint Philip, who has planted the vine of the Oratory in the Lord’s Church “with so much labour, anxiety and peril”, continue to support us by his prayers in this month where we will keep his solemn feast. A month, of course, which is honoured by the Church in favour of the Mother of God, from whose fruitfulness was born the True Vine. United to her prayers, calling for a deeper configuration to Christ, may we bear fruit in imitation of the fruit of her womb, Jesus. Amen.