The vine and the branches
1 I am the true vine and my Father is the vine grower.
2 If any of my branches doesn’t bear fruit, he breaks it off; and he prunes every branch that does bear fruit, that it may bear even more fruit.
3 You are already made clean by the word I have spoken to you;
4 live in me as I live in you. The branch cannot bear fruit by itself but has to remain part of the vine; so neither can you if you don’t remain in me.
5 I am the vine and you are the branches. As long as you remain in me and I in you, you bear much fruit; but apart from me you can do nothing.
6 Whoever does not remain in me is thrown away as they do with branches and they wither. Then they are gathered and thrown into the fire and burned.
7 If you remain in me and my words in you, you may ask whatever you want and it will be given to you.
8 My Father is glorified when you bear much fruit: it is then that you become my disciples.
9 As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; remain in my love.
10 You will remain in my love if you keep my commandments, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.
11 I have told you all this, that my own joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.
12 This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you.
13 There is no greater love than this, to give one’s life for one’s friends;
14 and you are my friends if you do what I command you.
15 I shall not call you servants any more, be cause servants do not know what their mas ter is about. Instead I have called you friends, since I have made known to you everything I learned from my Father.
16 You did not choose me; it was I who chose you and sent you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last. And everything you ask the Father in my name, he will give you.
17 This is my command, that you love one another.
The hostile world
18 If the world hates you, re member that the world hated me before you.
19 This would not be so if you belonged to the world, because the world loves its own. But you are not of the world since I have chosen you from the world; because of this the world hates you.
20 Remember what I told you: the servant is not greater than his master; if they persecuted me, they will persecute you, too. If they kept my word, they keep yours as well.
21 All this they will do to you for the sake of my name because they do not know the One who sent me.
22 If I had not come to tell them, they would have no sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin.
23 Those who hate me hate my Father.
24 If I had not done among them what no one else has ever done, they would have no sin. But after they have seen all this, they hate me and my Father,
25 and the words written in their law be come true: They hated me without cause.
The Spirit will come
26 From the Father, I will send you the Spirit of truth. When this Helper has come from the Father, he will be my witness,
27 and you, too, will be my witnesses for you have been with me from the beginning.
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Comments John, Chapter 15
• 15.1 In this second farewell discourse, Jesus invites us to remain steadfast in the midst of the world. The discourse is divided into four parts:
– the parable of the vine: I have sent you to produce fruits.
– the world will hate you.
– the work of the Holy Spirit.
– in a little while you will see me again.
First, the parable of the vine. Jesus uses an image from the Bible, but he changes the original meaning, as he did before when speaking of the Good Shepherd (Jn 10:1). The vine represents the people of Israel. Planted from selected stock, cared for by the Lord, it should have produced fruits of justice (Mk 12:1).
Now the true Vine has taken root. Christ is the trunk from which the branches sprout, that is to say, all of us who live by him. He is also the entire plant, trunk and branches together: the Christians are really the body of Christ.
The vine was the people of Israel, and what mattered more to them was the collective conduct of the community as one body. What mattered was not the individuals but Israel. Now Jesus does not say: The Christian community is the vine, but: I am the vine. So each of us has to consider how he is joined with Jesus through faith, prayer, and keeping his word. Each one has to bear fruit. Jesus does not specify what these fruits should be: whether service, understanding, action for social justice, or a life silent ly offered to God. Rather he insists that these fruits should come from the Spirit and bear his proper seal. The success of the Church is not measured by its achievements, but by the progress of those who interiorize Christ’s mystery and share in his cross and resurrection.
After making it clear that we depend totally on him, Jesus repeats his commandment of love. There is a necessary order in building the Christian life.
If from the start we say: We should love our neighbor because this is the only commandment, we will achieve nothing; because each one understands love in his own way, while not having as yet interiorized the thinking of Christ. Moreover, we need to receive from the source of all love the ability to love selflessly. Christ asks us to first share his thinking: that is what the expression, keep my commandments means. Thus we become his friends, knowing him as a person who loves us and acts in us. Later we will produce the authentic fruit of love, whose source is Christ.
• 18. In spite of Jesus’ having returned to his Father to initiate a more effective and universal presence among humankind, Satan continues to act with the power he has usurped. The hatred of those who belong to Satan is directed against the believers and the Church. Such helpers of Satan are called in John’s Gospel: the world.
Believers are destined to be hated by the world. It often happens that when a person begins to live in a more Christian and responsible way, she meets with opposition and hatred from her own family. No one knows what has aroused the hatred, but the devil does, who moves everything to discourage us.
Even in the Church we find those who are of the world and believe that they are serving God (16:2) when they persecute the true disciples of Christ. Some who identify themselves with what they consider “the interests of the Church” can even persecute, and at times with malice, those who are Gospel-minded. In reality they know neither Jesus nor his Father.
When our hope does not come from God, trials discourage us; but when our hope is rooted in God, we are strengthened and remain stead fast. In the parable of the vine, Jesus said: “My father prunes every branch that bears fruit so that it will bear more fruit.”
• 26. THE FATHER, THE SON AND THE HOLY SPIRIT
In making us children of his Father, Jesus enables us to discover the intimate mystery of God. In God there is communion among the three persons: the Father, the Son and their common Spirit.
We speak of their common Spirit, because Jesus said both: The Father will give you another Helper (14:16) and: The Helper which I will send you (15:26). Now he says: He will take what is mine and tell it to you: everything that the Father has is also mine (16:15).
“The Spirit” is not a poetic figure: it is Someone. This has already been commented on (Jn 7:37; 14:1).
Starting from the day of Pentecost, the Spirit began to act in the Church, thus showing that he was the Spirit of Christ. The unbelieving Jews thought that God was with them, but in reality his Spirit did not act among them. So it was clear that they had sinned (v. 16:9) for not believing in Christ.
What is the way of righteousness (v. 8). The righteous One is Christ and the righteous persons are those who believe in him without seeing him (v. 10).
The Acts of the Apostles records how the Spirit worked in the first disciples of Jesus. Be fore granting miraculous powers, the Spirit gave them joy, peace and mutual love, as well as inner certainty that Jesus had risen and was among them.
The Spirit guides missionaries; he gives them the power to perform miracles; he gives to believers the knowledge of God, new capacities for working, healing, serving and shaking up a sinful world. Throughout history the Spirit would raise up people of faith, martyrs, prophets, and through them transform the world. In this way the Savior, seemingly defeated, would be justified; and it becomes evident that the loser is Satan, who already has been condemned (v. 11). The evil spirit, great director of the worldly show, is displaced and his in fluence limited. A new force, which is the Spirit, orients history and guides us towards the total truth.