Bear More Fruit May 17

Prayer

God, source of all Life, prune me so I can bear more fruit for you.

Jesus, Son of the Living God, prune me so I can grow in faith, hope and love as I carry out your commandments.

Holy Spirit, Advocate of all, stay with me on this growth-journey because I can not bear fruit unless I remain in the Lord and the Lord remains in me. Amen.

Study
http://www.usccb.org/nab/051706.shtml

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower. He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and everyone that does [bear fruit] he prunes so that it bears more fruit.” John 15:1-2

Imagine that you are a new, apprentice gardener. As with all neophytes, the training and pruning of grapevines confuses you. You need a teacher to show you how to prune properly.

You have found a mentor in an elderly, Middle Eastern man who used to live in a vineyard in Egypt. You ask him to teach you a simple system for your new grapevine.
“Before pruning grapes,” he tells you, “you must learn the growth and fruiting characteristics of the grapevine.” He tells you some basic rules that sound amazing like John 15.

Gardening: Grapevines produce fruit clusters on the previous season's growth (Two-year and older wood is not fruitful but new growth is fruitful).

Gospel: He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and everyone that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit.

Gardening: Before pruning, an average grapevine may have 200 to 300 buds which are capable of producing fruit. However, if it grows too much it will die.

Gospel: Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither; people will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned.

Gardening: If the vine is left unpruned, the number of grape clusters would be excessive. The vine would be unable to ripen the large crop or sustain adequate vegetative growth.

Gospel: Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me.

Gardening: The purpose of pruning is to obtain maximum yields of high quality grapes and to allow adequate vegetative growth for the following season.

Gospel: By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.

“In this part of the world, the most desirable time to prune grapevines is in late winter or early spring,” he explains. “This is the same time of year as Lent when Christians prepare for the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus. It’s amazing, you know, a properly pruned grapevine has a remarkable resemblance to the cross.”

Our faith in the vine and the vine grower provides for us a faith system that spurs us on to growth.

Lately, I have been reading two key books on the Rule of St. Benedict. The first is a reflection on the daily readings from the Rule by Sister Joan Chittister, OSB, and the other a reflection by some Buddhist monks called Dharma’s Rule. In it we learn that the root meaning of the Latin and Greek words translated as “rule” is trellis.

St. Benedict was not promulgating rules for living; he was establishing a framework upon which life can grow. While a branch of a plant climbing a trellis cannot go in any direction it wants, you cannot know in advance which way it will go. The plant is finding its own path within a structure. The space in which it moves is open, though not without boundaries.

The similarity of the vine/vine-grower/pruning image in John has strikingly close parallels with this rule set down six centuries later and the Cursillo method stressing piety, study and action.

Action

What habits or practices do you have that the “vine-grower” would come to prune? Television watching? Sports? Hobbies? Work? If we take too much time for the busy-ness of the world, there won’t be enough time left for God.

Is there anything in your yard that you need to prune? Go outside and do it. Study the proper techniques for pruning if you don’t know what you are doing. While doing it, mediate on how the Vine-grower might be pruning you.