Daily Reading

First Reading

Acts 15:1-6

Then certain individuals came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to discuss this question with the apostles and the elders. So they were sent on their way by the church, and as they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, they reported the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the believers. When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they reported all that God had done with them. But some believers who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees stood up and said, “It is necessary for them to be circumcised and ordered to keep the law of Moses.

The apostles and the elders met together to consider this matter.

Psalm

Psalm 122:1-2, 3-4ab, 4cd-5

I was glad when they said to me,
    “Let us go to the house of the Lord!”
Our feet are standing
    within your gates, O Jerusalem.
Jerusalem—built as a city
    that is bound firmly together.
To it the tribes go up,
    the tribes of the Lord,
as was decreed for Israel,
    to give thanks to the name of the Lord.
For there the thrones for judgment were set up,
    the thrones of the house of David.

Gospel Reading

John 15:1-8

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.

Reflection

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus declares that he is the vine and we are the branches who must remain in him. If we ourselves do not participate in who Jesus is, we miss the spiritual power that he meant to unleash. 

If John’s Gospel is any indication, Jesus does not want worshipers but followers, or better, participants: “I am the vine, you are the branches”; “Remain in me, as I remain in you”; “My flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” 

The beautifully organic images that John presents are meant, it seems to me, to communicate the life-changing power of the Incarnation: The Logos became flesh, our flesh, so that we might allow the divine energy to come to birth in us. 

Much of this is summed up in the oft-repeated patristic adage that God became human so that humans might become God. Many of our great theologians and spiritual masters speak unselfconsciously of “divinization”—that is to say, a sharing in the symbiosis that is the Incarnation—as the proper goal of human life.