Published May 2 2024

Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

5rd Easter Sunday – Year B

1st reading: Acts 9, 26-31

Psalm: 21 (22), 26b-27, 28-29, 31-32

2rd reading: 1 John 3,18-24

Gospel: John 15,1-8

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“Apart from me, you can do nothing ". Jesus does not say: “without me, you will not go all the way”. He does not say: “without me, you cannot do everything”. He tells us : “Without me you cannot nothing TO DO ", and we would be wrong not to take Jesus seriously. Because if we could do things without Him, then there was no need for Him to give His life on the cross to save us. We must measure the tragedy of our condition as sinful man; but we must also measure the even greater power of God's mercy who so loved the world that he gave the only begotten Son, that everyone who believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

In this chapter 15 of Saint John, the rest of which we will read next Sunday, the Lord relies on the allegory of the vine so that we understand better how our own life is articulated with his, and at the same time that we understand the church Square. I am the vine, said Jesus. The vine is everything; it is the whole vine, the branches, the fruits. He is the whole and we are each grafted into this vine…we take part in it. Paul, with another allegory, will tell us that we become members of the body of Christ (Rom 12,5). It is the same mystery and all of these branches united to Christ, it is the Church. And we see clearly in this image of the vine and the branches, how, for the branch to bear fruit, the sap of the vine must flow in it; If the branch no longer allows itself to be nourished by sap, it becomes a dry branch which no longer bears fruit and which must be cut. A winegrower taught me — even Parisians learn things from the countryside! — that the vine was a liana; the logic of the vine is to expand; if you leave the vine alone, it spreads. For it to bear fruit, it must be cut because then the vine understands that it can no longer extend by spreading the branches; it will take another way: it will produce fruit to be able to reproduce and continue to expand in another way. And so, for a vine to bear fruit, it must be pruned.

And this is what Jesus tells us: every branch that bears fruit he purifies by pruning it. We don't like that very much... The branches that don't bear fruit are called "gluttonous", that is to say they exhaust the sap, but to do nothing other than expand.

It is also for us that what comes to us from Christ makes us bear fruit, that is to say, makes us renounce our self-centeredness and our selfishness to enter into the movement of charity which is given self. The fruits that must be borne — the glory of my Father is that you bear much fruit — are the fruits of the Spirit, the fruits of charity. And we echo the second reading: “Little children, let us love not with words or speeches, but with deeds and in truth.”, and on this point Thérèse is obviously a teacher of the novices, but also of us. 

I read to you this passage from manuscript C:

Jesus […] at the Last Supper […] said [to his disciples] with inexpressible tenderness: I give you a new commandment, that is to love one another, and that as I have loved you, you should love one another. each other. The mark by which everyone will know that you are my disciples is if you love one another. […]

Beloved Mother, by meditating on these words of Jesus, I understood how imperfect my love for my sisters was, I saw that I did not love them as the Good God loves them. Ah! I now understand that perfect charity consists of supporting the faults of others, of not being surprised by their weaknesses, of being edified by the smallest acts of virtue that we see them practicing, but above all I understood that Charity must not remain locked in the depths of the heart: No one, Jesus said, lights a torch to put it under a bushel, but they put it on a candlestick so that it gives light to all those who are in the house. It seems to me that this torch represents the charity which must enlighten, rejoice, not only those who are dearest to me, but all those who are in the house, without exception. (Ms C 11v.12r)

Yes, bearing fruit means, through Jesus, with Him and in Him – and never without Him – loving all those we come into contact with without exception. Worldly logic is to choose those we associate with. Christian logic is to let ourselves be touched by all the people we meet and to learn to love them as God loves them, with a love that seeks deep within us this charity that the Holy Spirit spreads. in U.S ; this love which makes us imitate Jesus in an interior, intimate imitation, which is only possible because the Holy Spirit has been given to us (Cf. Rom 5,5:XNUMX). In this experience, in this path, we measure how much we do not always succeed. We realize how often we withdraw, how often we miss these opportunities for concrete charity from our brothers and sisters. Here again, Saint John shows us a path: “If our heart accuses us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows all things”. In a sentence that I like to quote, at the end of manuscript A, Thérèse exclaims: 

What a sweet joy to think that the good God is just, that is to say – that he takes into account our weaknesses, that he knows perfectly the fragility of our nature. (MsA 83v)

“If our heart accuses us, God is greater than our heart and knows all things.” We are wrong to grieve over our own sins or to grieve over the faults of others: we would do better to look at the charity that God allows us to spread and the charity that dwells in the hearts of our brothers and sisters; we would do better to contemplate the work of God. 

What should astonish us is not that man sins... what should astonish us is that a sinner is still capable of charity, that a sinner is still capable of loving like God love, because we are on the way, we are not yet at the end of the road and within us, everything is still mixed. And we must consent to things being mixed up, not by becoming complicit, neither in our own sin, nor in the sin of others, not by stopping fighting against sin, of course... but we have never removed darkness other than by shedding light, sin has never been removed other than by growing in charity.

Thérèse understands this well, too, who writes — she is at the end of her life a few months from dying:

Now I am no longer surprised by anything, I am not saddened by seeing that I am weakness itself, on the contrary it is in it that I glory and I expect every day to discover new things in myself. imperfections. Remembering that Charity covers the multitude of [15v°] sins, I draw from this fruitful mine that Jesus opened before me. (Ms C 15)

Yes, brothers and sisters, the Lord — we will hear him next Sunday — it is he who chose us, who appointed us to go forth and bear fruit and our fruit to remain (Jn 15,16:XNUMX). The fruit that is expected of us is the fruit of charity. Alas, we also know that we bear the fruits of sin; but what must mobilize our heart, mobilize our attention, is first and foremost to be united with Jesus, because without him we can do nothing, it is to seek by all possible means in all the actions of our life to love as Jesus loves. 

Thus, perhaps we will be able in the last days of our life, to exclaim like Thérèse on July 11, 97: One could believe that it is because I have not sinned that I have such great confidence in the good God. Please tell me, my Mother, that if I had committed all possible crimes, I would still have the same confidence, I feel that all this multitude of offenses would be like a drop of water thrown into a burning inferno. (CJ July 11, 6)

Let us ask for the grace to be ourselves ablaze with the fire of charity, to ourselves become a burning brazier in the midst of our brothers.

Amen