Stay in the vine

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Reflection on Easter 5th, year B1

To stay in the vine … in a world that likes concrete houses instead of greenery and life cables connecting with the virtual world.

Such a reel is convenient, because not faith, in a church, a bed, a cross … such Christianity in a plush, light version, but necessarily with an artificially attached keep smiling.

Or habitual faith, either for tradition or for ethnic / family reasons.

Either faith in the form of a weekend Sunday presentation of a new fur, a car, or out of fear of “what will people say?”

Or fiscal faith: settle accounts with God, after all not God, as with the tax office …

Faith reduced to mere baggage, to a collection of rules and prohibitions, to fragmented religious practices, to selective adherence to the truths of faith, to blurred or harsh moralism …

Maybe the heat is smoldering somewhere and even the warmth is giving a little … fire, a flame that not only gives heat, but kindles, ignites everything that is…

To remain in Christ like a branch in a vine. To remain in Him like a young green leaf that feels secure in connection with a tree …

What does it mean to abide in Him like a branch in a vine? First of all, to realize who I am and what I can if I am united to the Bush of Life.

I can be born again every day, I can bloom and bear fruit, I can be beautiful.

Michelangelo was walking through the streets of Florence and noticed a huge, if irregular, slab of marble, which the builders of the palace rejected as nonsensical. The artist asked the employees to give it to him. They asked him, “What is this useless piece of marble for you, what are you going to do with it?” The artist replied that he saw an imprisoned angel in him and that he wanted to free him! The employees laughed at the strange man and gave him an unnecessary stone. And Michelangelo released the imprisoned angel whom the whole world admires today …

Being in Him, I can sculpt other wonders of the world from the body of my life, I can release the sleeping angel from myself and others. Beauty is born in me if I am united with Him, because it is He who frees the angel sleeping in me.

The one who grows the vineyard is the gardener with a capital “O”. The work of a gardener resembles that of a sculptor, or better – a surgeon. Pruning a bush, carving a stone, and operating a person are associated with pain and suffering, but it turns out to be necessary and saving. Look at the difficult experiences in your life, at all kinds of pains and suffering … Do you see something more in all of this?

To remain in the vine in order to become more like Him in everything. Remove yourself from the center to make room for God. To be sculpted and undercut, so that the glory and greatness of God will be revealed. It is enough to trust and grow stronger in Him every day. From today, from now on!