“I am the Vine, you are the branches.”

There are three times in the Mass that I feel most proud to be a Christian. The first is right at the beginning we say together the “I confess”. “I confess to Almighty God ­ and to you my brothers and sisters; that I have sinned through my own fault...” Before we do anything else, we know our failures. We take responsibility for our failures. And we blame no-one but ourselves for our failures. And we know that God knows our failures. And we know that God is greater than our failures. He has given to His church the power of the forgiveness of sins.

We are Redeemed.

The second time is at communion, when we take into our bodies and our lives the Bread of Life ­ the Body of Christ broken for us.
In that moment, we are One with Christ.
And we are One with the Church ­ a thousand million Christians all over the World sharing this same Body of Christ ­ Today!
And we are One with all the thousands of millions of Christians who have gone before us marked with the Sign of Faith ­ who also shared this Body of Christ ­ stretching right back to the Apostles and to Christ himself.
And we are One with all the thousands of millions of Christians who will come after us. We are all one Body in Christ.

The third time is at the end, when we say“Let us go in peace to love and to serve the Lord. Thanks be to God!”
Our Christian life does not end here in this building.
It is not just a warm feeling for Sunday morning. It stretches out to the whole community. It is a way of life that strengthens us to do on Monday to Saturday what we pray on Sunday.

This is what it means to be part of the True Vine ­ to be connected with Christ through the Unbroken connection of the Church, stretching back to the Apostles and Christ Himself. In our Mass, we confess our human Weakness before Him ­ we share in His Body ­ and we commit ourselves for the coming week to share His Life with all the People we meet ­ as the Lord asks us“To bear Fruit ­ fruit that will last.”

And so, let us stand and profess our Faith in God ­ the Father of the Vine.

“I am the Vine, you are the branches.”

There is a favourite preacher’s story which goes like this. A member of a certain parish in a cold country to the North of here, who previously had been attending Mass regularly, suddenly stopped going. After a few weeks, the priest decided to visit him. It was a cold evening and the priest found the man at home alone, sitting before a blazing coal fire. Guessing the reason for the priest’s visit, the man welcomed him, led him to a big chair near the fireplace and waited. The pastor made himself comfortable but said nothing. In the grave silence, he just sat and looked at the fire.

After a few minutes, the priest took the fire tongs, carefully picked up a brightly burning coal and placed it to one side of the hearth all on its own. Then he sat back in his chair, still silent. Both of them watched the coal. Gradually, that coal’s flame diminished, there was a momentary glow and then its fire went. Soon it was cold and dead. The priest got up again, picked up the cold, dead coal and put it back in the middle of the fire. Immediately it began to glow once more with the light and warmth of the burning coals around it.

The moral was simple. A single lump of coal cannot burn on its own ­ it takes the many lumps of coal to make a fire that does not go out. No Christian can burn for God for very long without the constant support of the rest of the Church.

I know a lot of Catholics who don’t come to Mass. I am sure you all do too. Sometimes, when I meet them I gently enquire about their reasons. Some of them tell me that, for them, the Mass has become a meaningless ritual which no longer engages them ­ a bore. Others tell me that life is just so busy they don’t have the time. But what most of them say is that they dislike what they describe as the hypocrisy of other people who do go to Mass. And when I ask them what they mean they say that they see people at Mass who, in other areas of their lives, have done ­ and even are doing ­ very wrong and evil things. They tell me that there are too many people at Mass who pray one thing, but do another. I like to tell them that in one way they are right. None of us is perfect; none of us claims to be perfect; none of us truly believes that she or he is living entirely the life that God created us all to live. Nevertheless, we all claim to be trying. And that is why we feel the need to come to Mass ­ to rekindle the fire of faith that is burning ­ however faintly ­ within us.

But there is also a way in which those lapsed Catholics are wrong ­ we do not meet as hypocrites to congratulate ourselves at pulling the wool over God’s eyes for one more week. By giving this time, once a week ­ or even a little more often ­ but at least once a week, to come together as Christians, to celebrate our salvation by a Lord who ­as St Paul says - loved us while we were still sinners; by giving this time, we are actually trying to live a little closer to the example that Christ gave as the model of our Salvation.

There is nothing hypocritical about taking as our goal in life the absolute perfection that is Christ. In a world that doesn’t like absolutes in any form, there will always be those who mock that choice and who seek to remind us of those times when we failed to reach that goal. But the value of any ideal is not that we achieve it, but that we live better in every attempt we make to achieve it.

When we are part of the Vine, there is nothing we cannot achieve together. Apart from it, we are single solitary individuals - dead lifeless coals ­ or as our gospel says ­ like a withered branch that is cut off. But, joined with the Branch, we are part of Body of Christ that is building the Kingdom in our own time, and our own place. Let us all remain part of that vine; let us all encourage others to join or rejoin that vine. And let us all bear much fruit that will give glory to our Father in heaven.

And so, let us stand and profess our Faith in God ­ the Father of the Vine.

Mount Street Jesuit Centre,
114 Mount Street,
London SW1K 3AH.
ENGLAND.
fatbaldnproud@yahoo.co.uk