By Cameron Ryan
The year is rolling on. Lent has come and gone; the weather is getting colder, and the first years now have their Saturdays to themselves. Autumn is well and truly upon us, and the warmth and splendour of nature is receding all around. Winter is around the corner.
We know that the Church is the Body of Christ, with each part serving a different role. St Paul tells us as much. But today Christ likens Himself to a vine.
In season, the shoots of a grapevine will bear fruit – fruit to be taken away and harvested. And as the vine matures and grows, those budding vines that were once at the surface become the very channel for the new growth to replace them.
A small shoot will eventually grow into a branch, and a branch into a bough – all being built up in size and strength, in continuity with the branch before them, drawing life through the trunk and from the sunlight above. It is only through the existing growth that the new springs forth.
In the holy vine, from Christ spring many branches. They are the apostles, through which life is transmitted to every extremity to bear leaves and fruit. If we hold the “Body of Christ” in parallel, the apostles might be considered to be the veins within. Just as the circulatory system animates every limb and finger of the body, the apostles advance to every corner of the world, to every soul in Christendom, carrying Christ’s holy blood with them.
In our own spiritual lives, we all have warm memories of times when we had consolation. We remember the sweetness of when we gave our hearts to Christ. Of our first deliberate confession, and communion in the state of grace. And very likely, it is the encouragement of this consolation that drew us to say “yes” to the call to sacred priesthood, and be here today.
But now we are seminarians, and as we have stepped up from our former lives, the bar has been raised. The daily plan of prayer and devotions that used to send us glowing out of our parish, has quickly become the bare minimum. Perhaps the honeymoon period is over, and God is not being quite as liberal with His consolation as He used to.
When we were new growth on the end of the vine, we felt the warm sun on our face, and we saw a rich and plenty harvest with our own eyes. But now, we are deeper within the hedge. We don’t always feel the sun as warmly as before. In this chapel, we are drawn back from the front lines, tucked away under the shade of the canopy. But here is Christ with us. We are being built up and prepared, spiritually, for it is through us that God wishes to send out his grace and life to nourish the new growth in front of us.
So how can we be good branches of the holy vine? We need to be cooperative links in a chain of grace. A branch doesn’t take sustenance to itself, but faithfully hands on the nutrients, and in doing so is itself built up and strengthened. How true does this ring to our own pastoral ministry? When we are in the parish, are we energised and encouraged, like a vine springing back from a cold winter? Or is it sheer willpower and obligation that has us spend our energy contributing to the sacramental and pastoral life of the Church?
Being ‘cut off from the vine’ is not necessarily visible. A branch may look sound from the outside, even while the inside is rotting or infested. Untreated, these branches eventually wither, and give out under pressure. It is all too easy for us to fall into invisible forms of spiritual disunity: disobedience, attachment to sin, or a weak prayer life.
We must not let this happen to us. We must always grow in continuity with Christ, following the trellis that the Father has set up for us. We must permit ourselves to be pruned of disordered attachments, so that we are strengthened on a virtuous course. And we must remain in intentional and generous conversation with Christ every day, drawing our life from our root.
Grapevines, however, are deciduous plants. In winter, the vine recedes but does not die. The leaves die off, but the vine goes back to its roots, secretly spreading out more deeply underground to store up nutrients until the conditions are more suitable.
In spring it starts to bear fruit, but it isn’t until late summer that it is ready to be harvested. The holy vine too bears its own fruit at the due time, but as Paul tells Timothy, we must witness to the truth both “in season and out of season”.
For us, it won’t get any warmer for a few months. It will become harder for us to get up early, the air won’t smell quite as sweet, and God will “send rain on the just and the unjust” during our walks to CTC.
But when spring comes and God grants the increase, we will see new leaves, new fruit, new flowers – new conversions, new reversions, new vocations – more than before, and the sun of consolation will shine on the Lord’s vineyard once more.