When we hear about Saint Paul’s arrival in Jerusalem, and how the disciples were initially afraid of him, their reaction seems very understandable given what his previous mission had been – the eradication of all those who were followers of Jesus Christ. What they had no way of knowing was the profound change that had taken place while he was in Damascus. They received part of the picture from Barnabas, in terms of how Saul, now Paul, had spoken out in Jesus’ name, but they did not really know about the profoundness of the change within him. How he had become during his time of blindness totally reliant on Jesus, both for his healing, but perhaps most importantly, for his strength to press on with the message he had been charged to share with all of humanity. His mission is our mission, and we need to understand that the same limitations that were evident for him, are equally a part of our make-up. We need our Lord if there is to be any hope of fulfilling the plan, He has for each one of us.
Our gospel reading today takes this message a bit further, as our Lord uses the analogy of a vine and its branches to describe our actual reliance on Him if we are living out His plan. We cannot really do anything without Him. To be fruitful, we must be both wise and humble, in that we need to be readily accepting of our limitations, and profoundly grateful for His graces that He gives to each of us as we need them. If we’re really honest with ourselves, I think we will each acknowledge our own limitations and how much more we are capable of when we simply allow ourselves to rely on His strength to work through our challenges in this life, and especially those that we encounter when we are trying to live out the gospel message in the face of so much resistance that our world throws in our direction because it does not want to walk in His light. There is no hope of our affecting change without His love and strength guiding us in doing so.
I truly believe one of our biggest stumbling blocks to our acceptance, and actually proper total reliance on our Lord’s strength is our own mentality that if we cannot do things using our own force of will and perceived strengths, then we are somehow failing. It’s an understandable conclusion in some respects given our culture, but in truth is exactly the wrong conclusion to be drawn if looked at through the eyes of faith. These eyes, those that perceive the actual vision of faith, are those that Saint Paul received when his blindness was lifted in Damascus through our Lord’s healing. When the scales that were on his eyes fell away, that had blocked the light from his eyes, the light of Christ was also able to penetrate and give him a clear vision of how his life was to be lived for God’s purposes, and how it would only be through acknowledging his own weakness and embracing the strength of Christ that he would be able to accomplish his mission. As I said earlier, his mission is ours as well, so it should be no surprise to us that we need to draw the same conclusion in order to be at all successful. This brings us back to the analogy of the vine and its branches, no branch can continue to grow without being attached to the vine, no follower of Christ can hope to grow in the spirit without that same connection back to Him.
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The Deacons Bench 