The word “remain” is too weak a word.
We remain after class to speak with a teacher. I remain committed to getting a certain job done. It will remain cloudy most of the weekend.
Remain – it works, but it isn’t strong enough. Not when it comes to our relationship with Jesus.
He tells us in this Sunday’s Gospel: “Remain in me, as I remain in you.”
Obviously, it’s clear what he’s asking us to do: stay in relationship; don’t leave him or his Church. If we are here at Mass today or even just reading this on-line, then in some way we are willing to remain in him, obviously.
But what if I told you that the translation here is somewhat weak. The word “remain” isn’t strong enough, quite frankly. Instead, there’s a better word, one that captures everything that Jesus longs for when it comes to a relationship with us:
Abide. “Abide in me.”
There’s a depth to that word which goes to the heart of the one who poured out his very life on the Cross for us. There is a richness here that conveys intimacy and growth; an encounter with love and mercy and grace that can change everything:
How we love others. How we serve. How we view the world. What we do with our lives. How we pick-up our crosses daily. How we pour ourselves out.
All of this happens at a much deeper level when we choose to abide – and not just remain – in Him.
To be frank, for most of my early life, I simply remained on the vine of Christ. It was surface level worship and lazy, lukewarm prayer. I ran from the Cross, ran from Confession, ran from the very things God wanted to do in my life to transform me and to make me his own.
I was willing to remain on the surface; I wasn’t ready to abide.
So, the question remains, how do we get to that place of abiding relationship? How do we abide in His merciful love?
The only answer I can come back to time and again: it’s through allowing ourselves to be pruned.
If you and I are serious about our baptismal call … if you and I are really hungry to grow deeper in our faith … then we must allow the Master Vine Grower to take out his hacksaw and pruning shears and get to work in our lives.
By allowing him to tend the garden of our hearts, he will in time trim away all the dead branches that we desperately cling-to, the ones that we believe are vital to our lives and that we can’t live without. In reality, though, these very branches ensnare and entangle us – keeping us attached to ego, sin, selfishness and bitterness.
What might be those dead branches for you? Are you actively harboring hate? Cheating on a spouse? Engaged in constant gossip? Using others via pornography or cheap, self-centered relationships?
The vine grower wants permission to prune – but won’t do so without our active, free-will consent. Thus, the question remains (Yes, I am using ‘that’ word): Do you want to abide in Christ? Really have his love be such a part of your life that it is hard to tell where his love begins and yours ends?
Then say ‘yes’ to the pruning.
But let me forewarn you: the pruning tool God uses is often in the shape of the Cross, and that cross often comes in different times and a variety of ways. Sometimes the cross comes as an illness; other times, it may be the end of a relationship or job that you wanted or thought would last forever. Pruning hurts and pruning empties us of ourselves.
And yet, as any good gardener or wine-connoisseur knows, healthy growth and a new crop will never appear if the decaying branches aren’t cut away and burned. Dead branches only suck the life out of what is striving to remain healthy and strong.
We will fight the pruning tool of the Cross, of course. It’s human nature to want to avoid the very thing that in the end will heal us and make us whole and holy. But, again, it is the only way to have Christ truly abide in us, and we in him.
For the past 20 years or so, our Church – this Bride of our Savior – has been asked to endure painful pruning as the scandal of abuse and hierarchical mismanagement and apathy has been brought to light. The evil that others allowed in order to protect the Church’s reputation and maintain cushy clerical lifestyles became the Cross that all of us have been asked to carry, whether we want to or not. It has not been pretty … or easy. As you know, many have left us.
It has been hell for us. And if it feels that way for you and me, imagine the agony Christ feels at watching his little children suffer, his Bride seeming to die-on-the-vine, and the shepherds who come in His name serving as the avenue for the Catholic faith’s irrelevance in the modern age. When Christ cried out on the Cross, he saw this very moment in time – and he went so that clerical abuse and scandal would not have the final word.
Satan will not win. The gates of hell will not prevail against the Church – Christ promised.
And thanks be to God, it hasn’t. By God’s grace, the Bride is still clinging to the Vine of Christ himself, and in clinging, she (the Church) is being pruned of the very things that wanted to destroy her. The Church of Christ can’t return to him covered in blemishes; the Church must go Home at the end of the age spotless and pure.
So, as painful as this road has been for us, praise God He has done the hard work of pruning. Thank God He is healing this Church we love (and also sometimes get so aggravated with and hurt by). Thank God He loves us enough to prune us, and not just let us die-on-the-vine.
After all, we as disciples – and we as Church – aren’t just called to remain in Jesus. That’s too easy. Too surface-level.
We must abide in Him. And abiding only comes via the Way of the Cross.