Fifth Sunday of Easter (B), May 3, 2015 – Acts 9, 26-31; 1 Jn 3, 18-24; Jn 15, 1-8

Let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth (1 Jn 3, 18)

Jesus guarantees fruitfulness to those who believe and remain in him.

Calling himself the true vine, Jesus makes his own an image that is used for Israel. He makes known that he is the perfect fulfillment of what God looks for in his people.

God wants his people to be faithful to him and thus continue eating from his plenty and drinking from the fountain of living water (Jer 2, 5. 13. 21). The unfaithful punish themselves and end up being good for nothing (Jer 2, 19; Ez 15).

But faithfulness to God means faithfulness to the neighbor. Quite well are we reminded of the futility of sacrifices and the recitations of God’s commandments or covenant that are practiced by thieves, adulterers, calumniators, detractors, deceivers and the disrespectful (Ps 50).

God looks, then, for rightness and justice in his people (Is 5, 1-7). He wants us to fast genuinely: to release those bound unjustly, to untie the thongs of the yoke, to set the oppressed free, to share our bread with the hungry, to shelter the homeless, to cloth the naked, not to turn our back on our own, to avoid using even threatening gestures (Is 58).

And to make sure we are faithful to God and the neighbor, it is enough for us to remain in the one who became obedient to death and who went about doing good. He came down from heaven to do the will of the one who sent him to proclaim the Good News to the poor and combat human suffering.

That is because those who remain in Jesus, living off the Word and the Eucharist, become one body and blood with him. They surely have his obedient, charitable and fruitful DNA. With them bearing much fruit, as former persecutor Paul unexpectedly did, the Father is glorified.

Indeed, Jesus’ intimate friends, or in the words of St. Vincent de Paul, persons of prayer are “capable of everything” (FrXI:83). Their interior life with Christ leads them to conceive and make effective both small and “great and holy affections for the service of the God” (FrXII:93) and the poor.

And those who belong to Jesus attribute every success to grace. They are not like the rich fool, drunk with abundance (Lk 12, 13-21) or like the people who, the more fruit they bear, like a luxuriant vine, the more idolatrous they become (Hos 10, 1).

Lord, make us abound in good works that will shine like a light on others, so that they may glorify you.

Ross Reyes Dizon

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