What Does It Mean
to Remain in the Vine?
“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 every one that does he prunes so that it bears more
fruit. You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you. Remain
in me, as I remain in you. 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. I am the
vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much
fruit, because without me you can do nothing.
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. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you
want and it will be done for you. By this is my Father glorified, that you bear
much fruit and become my disciples.[1]
What does it mean to remain in the
Vine? This might sound like a dumb
question, but bear with me.
If one was in a conversation with a
Christian and were to ask the individual, “Are you remaining in Christ; are you
abiding in Him,” I’m going to assume the person would say, yes. Then the questioning could progress: How do
you know? I’m going to presume that the
majority of people would answer, “Because I…”
It basically becomes: “I am abiding because I believe I am abiding; I am
abiding because I believe in Christ; I am abiding because I am doing…” All of these would be wrong because, in
short, we can give thanks to God for what we are in control of, and we must be
able to give thanks to God for all things.
Let us consider the beginning of Psalm 122.
I
rejoiced when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord.”[2] The first question that comes to mind is: Why
didn’t the psalmist just go to the house of the Lord—the “house of the Lord”
being God? It is as if his soul is
yearning for God’s presence; nevertheless, he could not go on his own. I think St. Augustine envisions likewise
because he says: “As impure love inflames the mind and summons the soul
destined to perish to lust for earthly things and to follow what is perishable
and precipitates it into lowest places and sinks it into the abyss, so holy
love raises us to heavenly things and inflames us to what is eternal and
excites the soul to those things which do not pass away nor die and from the
abyss of hell raises it to heaven. Yet all love has a power of its own, nor can
love in the soul of the lover be idle; it must need to draw it on.”[3] He explains that Psalm 122 is a psalm of
degrees, the psalmist desiring to ascend to heaven, the eternal Jerusalem,
where our fellow citizens, the angels, are.
He goes on to teach: “We are wanderers on
earth from these our fellow-citizens. We
sigh in our pilgrimage; we shall rejoice in the city. But we find companions in this pilgrimage who
have already seen this city herself, who summon us to run towards her. At these, he also rejoices, saying, ‘I
rejoiced in them who said unto me, ‘We will go into the house of the Lord’.”[4] These companions are necessary for the
psalmist, otherwise he would become faint and discontinue the journey.
All souls are initially in the Vine,
because there is no life outside of God.
However, because we are born in original sin, we do not remain in
Him—unless God does a work, a work which was not initially of the person’s
will, for infants do not make a choice for God.
Therefore, we begin with an impure love, and God must draw us with His
pure love. He sends “companions” to help
us continue the journey. It is then that
we are back in the Vine, through Baptism.
We cannot baptize ourselves; therefore, we thank God for putting us back
in the Vine.
I am the true
vine, and my Father is the vine grower. St.
Hilary tells us: “[Jesus] rises in haste to perform the sacrament of His final
passion in the flesh (such is His desire to fulfill His Father’s commandment)
and therefore takes occasion to unfold the mystery of His assumption of His
flesh, whereby He supports us, as the vine does its branches: I am the true
vine.”[5] St. Augustine teaches that “He says this as
being the Head of the Church, of which we are the members, the Man Christ Jesus,
for the vine and the branches are of the same nature.”[6] In the Man Jesus, there is wholly humanity
and wholly God. Therefore, in Baptism,
we take on the same nature: humanity and divinity.
St. Augustine expounds: “We cultivate God,
and God cultivates us. But our culture
of God does not make Him better. Our
culture is that of adoration, not of plowing; His culture of us makes us
better. His culture consists in
extirpating all the seeds of wickedness from our hearts, in opening our heart
to the plow, as it were, of His word, in sowing in us the seeds of His
commandments, in waiting for the fruits of piety.”[7]
From St. John Chrysostom, we learn: “Forasmuch
as Christ was sufficient for Himself but His disciples needed the help of the
Husbandman of the vine He says nothing, but adds concerning the branches: Every branch in Me that bears not fruit, He
takes away. By fruit is meant life, i.e.
that no one can be in Him without good works.”[8] He goes on further to say: “Inasmuch as even
the best of men requires the work of the husbandman, He adds, ‘And every branch
that bears fruit, He purges it, that it may bring forth more fruit.’ He alludes here to the tribulations and trials
which were coming upon them, the effect of which would be to purge and … to
strengthen them. By pruning the
branches, we make the tree shoot out the more.”[9]
Augustine enjoins: “Who is there in
this world so clean that he cannot be more and more changed? Here, if we say that we have no sin, we
deceive ourselves. He cleans then the
clean, i.e. the fruitful, that the cleaner they be, the more fruitful they may
be. Christ is the vine in that He said, ‘My
Father is greater than I;’ but in that He said, ‘I and My Father are one,’ He
is the husbandman not like those who carry on an external ministry only, for He
gives increase within. Thus, He calls
Himself immediately the cleanser of the branches: ‘Now you are clean through
the word, which I have spoken to you.’ He performs the part of the husbandman then,
as well as of the vine. But why does He
not say, ‘You are clean by reason of the baptism wherewith you are washed?’ Because it is the Word in the water which
cleans. Take away the Word, and what is
the water, but water. Add the Word to
the element, and you have a sacrament. From what source has the water such virtue as
that, by touching the body, it cleans the heart but by the power of the Word,
not spoken only, but believed? For, in a
word itself, the passing sound is one thing; the abiding virtue, another. This word of faith is of such avail in the
Church of God that by Him who believes, presents, blesses, sprinkles the
infant, it cleanses that infant, though itself is unable to believe.”[10] That brings us to our remaining in the Vine.
The passage I have quoted from, of
course, is from the New American Bible Revised Edition. The Revised Standard Version, as do many
other versions, utilize the word “abide.”
This is the word I want to use, in that it gives more clarity than the
word “remain.” According to
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (Eleventh Edition), “abide” is from the
Old English word “bidan,” to wait, which is akin to the Latin word “fidere,” to
trust, and the Greek word “peithesthai,” to believe. This is what is necessary in order to remain
in the Vine. Needless to say, to trust
and to believe means obedience to God.
According to the afore-mentioned dictionary, “abide” means to wait for,
to endure without yielding, to bear patiently, to accept without
objection. It also means to remain
stable or fixed in a state, to continue in a place, to conform to, or to
acquiesce in. This goes to explain what
our Lord is referring to when He tells us to remain in Him. Keeping this in mind, let us return to the
Church fathers.
Chrysostom relates: “Having said
that they were clean through the word which He had spoken to them, He now
taught them that they must do their part.”[11] Augustine teaches: “The branches do not
confer any advantage upon the vine but receive their support from it. The vine supplies nourishment to the
branches, takes none from them, so that the abiding in Christ and the having
Christ abiding in them are both for the profit of the disciples, not of Christ,
according to what follows: ‘As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it
abide in the vine, no more can you except you abide in Me.’ Great display of grace! He strengthens the
hearts of the humble, stops the mouth of the proud. They who hold that God is not necessary for
the doing of good works--the subverters, not the asserters, of free will--contradict
this truth. For he who thinks that he
bears fruit of himself is not in the vine.
He who is not in the vine is not in Christ. He who is not in Christ is not a Christian.”[12]
According to the Blessed Alcuin: “All
the fruit of good works proceeds from this root. He who has delivered us by His grace, also
carries us onward by his help so that we bring forth more fruit. Wherefore He repeats and explains what He has
said: ‘I am the vine, you are the branches. He that abides in Me, by believing,
obeying, persevering, and I in Him, by enlightening, assisting, giving
perseverance, the same, and none other, brings forth much fruit’.”[13]
Saints John Chrysostom and Augustine
puts the final touches on what it means to remain in the Vine. Chrysostom says: “He shows what it is to
abide in Him. If you abide in Me and My
words abide in you, you shall ask what you will and it shall be done to you. It is to be shown by their works.”[14] Of course, the things we ask for will be especially
for others, that God’s will be done. As
stated by Augustine: “May His words be said to abide in us when we do what He
has commanded and love what He has promised. But, when His words abide in the memory and
are not found in the life, the branch is not accounted to be in the vine,
because it derives no life from its root. So far as we abide in the Savior, we cannot
will anything that is foreign to our salvation. We have one will insofar as we
are in Christ, another insofar as we are in this world. … And here we are
directed to the prayer, Our Father. Let
us adhere to the words and the meaning of this prayer in our petitions, and
whatever we ask will be done for us.”[15] This is what it means to remain in the Vine.
[1] New American Bible,
Revised Edition., (Washington, DC: The United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops, 2011), Jn 15:1–8.
[2] Ibid.,
Ps 122:1.
[3] St. Augustine. St. Augustine: Exposition on the Book
of Psalms (Kindle Locations 28636-28640). Kindle Edition.
[5] Aquinas, St. Thomas. Catena Aurea - Gospel of St.
John - EasyRead Version (Kindle Locations 7660-7662). . Kindle Edition
[6] Ibid., (Kindle Locations 7663-7664)
[7] Ibid., (Kindle Locations 7668-7671)
[8] Ibid., (Kindle Locations 7671-7673)
[9] Ibid., (Kindle Locations 7674-7677)
[10] Ibid., (Kindle Locations 7677-7686)
[11] Ibid., (Kindle Location 7694)
[12] Ibid., (Kindle Locations 7695-7701)
[13] Ibid., (Kindle Locations 7701-7704)
[14] Ibid., (Kindle Locations 7715-7716)
[15] Ibid., (Kindle Locations 7716-7722)
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