COMMENT

----- Forwarded Message ----  
 From: WILLIAM ...
To: Fr Donald ...
Sent: Tue, 24 May, 2011 19:07:20
Subject: Re: [Blog] Fr Wiki Links

Dear Father Donald,

France certainly shows their love and appreciation of the life and witness of the Atlas community.
It is wonderful to see, and with very interesting links too.
Your Blog has been very active in commemoration!
I am wondering ... who sent those BEAUTIFUL white roses, the gift has the artistic, thoughtful sensitivity ...
What a joy this has all been, thank you Father!
... in Our Risen Lord,
William

Paschaltide and Memory of Algeria Monks d. 21 May 1996

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Wednesday 25 May 20011

Gospel John 15:1. "I am the true vine". ["As we have seen Benedict understands the cross in the light of a panoply of convergent typological prefigurments, including most prominently Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac and the Passover sacrice,"  quotation from The Biblical Theology of Pope Benedict XVI(Scott Hahn)].
The Pope writes clearly about the true vine, one of the Principal Johannine Images.

The windows to John are opened widely in context of Benedict's writing.

- see below and 'break jump', POPE BENEDICT XVI — JESUS OF NAZARETH(Part I) – pp 259-263.

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Saint Bede: Feast 25th May. 

Born at Jarrow in Northumberland, England, Bede was entrusted as a young lad to the care of St. Benedict Biscop, Abbot of Wearmouth. Having himself become a monk, Bede, “the most observant and the happiest of all monks”, was also one of the most learned churchmen of his time. He wrote very full commentaries on Holy Scripture, which are often used in the Breviary. Leo XIII proclaimed him one of the Doctors of the Universal Church. He died in Jarrow on May 25, 735.

(From St. Andrews Daily Missal 1962 ed.)

At the Mass today, the Celebrant quoted but did not know the words, “the most observant and the happiest of all monks”. 

He said that coming through the centuries the presence of Bede impresses us.

Bede the Venerable

“And I pray thee, loving Jesús, that as Thou hast graciously given me to drink in with delight the words of Thy knowledge, so Thou wouldst mercifully grant me to attain one day to Thee, the fountain of all wisdom and to appear forever before Thy face.” - St. Bede the Venerable
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POPE BENEDICT XVI — JESUS OF NAZARETH(Part I) – pp 259-263

• The parable of the vine in Jesus' Farewell Discourses continues the whole history of biblical thought and language on the subject of the vine and discloses its ultimate depth. "I am the true vine;" the Lord says (Jn. 15:1). The word true is the first important thing to notice about this saying. Barrett makes the excellent observation that "fragments of meaning, obscurely hinted at by other vines, are gathered up and made explicit by him. He is the true vine" (Gospel, p. 473). But the really important thing about this saying is the opening: "I am." The Son identifies himself with the vine; he himself has become the vine. He has let himself be planted in the earth. He has entered into the vine: The mystery of the Incarnation, which John spoke of in the prologue to his Gospel, is taken up again here in a surprising new way. The vine is no longer merely a creature that God looks upon with love, but that he can still uproot and reject. In the Son, he himself has become the vine; he has forever identified himself, his very being, with the vine.

• This vine can never again be uprooted or handed over to be plundered. It belongs once and for all to God; through the Son God himself lives in it. The promise has become irrevocable, the unity indestructible. God has taken this great new step within history, and this constitutes the deepest content of the parable. Incarnation, death, and Resurrection come to be seen in their fUll breadth: "For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we preached among you ... was not Yes and No; but in him it is always Yes. For all the promises of God find their Yes in him" (2 Cor 1:19f.), as Saint Paul puts it.
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• The idea that through Christ the vine has become the Son himself is a new one, and yet the ground for it has been prepared in biblical tradition. Psalm 80:18 closely associates the "Son of Man" with the vine. Conversely: Although the Son has now himself become the vine, this is precisely his method for remaining one with his own, with all the scattered children of God whom he has come to gather (cf J n 1l:52). The vine is a Christological title that as such embodies a whole ecclesiology. The vine signifies Jesus' inseparable oneness with his own, who through him and with him are all "vine;' and whose calling is to "remain" in the vine. John does not make use of the Pauline image of the "Body of Christ." But the parable of the vine expresses substantially the same idea: the fact that Jesus is inseparable from his own, and that they are one with him and in him. In this sense, the discourse about the vine indicates the irrevocability of the gift God has given, never to take it back again. In becoming incarnate, God has bound himself At the same time, though, the discourse speaks of the demands that this gift places upon us in ever new ways.

• The vine, we said, can no longer be uprooted or handed over to be plundered. It does, however, constantly need purifi¬cation. Purification, fruit, remaining, commandment, love, unity—these are the key words for this drama of being in and with the Son in the vine that the Lord's words place before our soul. Purification—the Church and the individual need constant purification. Processes of purification, which are as necessary as they are painful, run through the whole of history, the whole life of those who have dedicated themselves to Christ. The mystery of death and resurrection is ever present in these purifications. When man and his institutions climb too high, they need to be cut back; what has become too big must be brought back to the simplicity and poverty of the Lord himself It is only by undergoing such processes of dying away that fruitfulness endures and renews itself

• The goal of purification is fruit, the Lord tells us. What sort of fruit is it that he expects? Let us begin by looking at the fruit that he himself has borne by dying and rising. Isaiah and the whole prophetic tradition spoke of how God expected grapes, and thus choice wine, from his vine. This was an image of the righteousness, the rectitude that consists in living within the Word and will of God. The same tradi-tion says that what God finds instead are useless, small, sour grapes that he can only throwaway. This was an image of life lived away from God's righteousness amid injustice, corruption, and violence. The vine is meant to bear choice grapes that through the process of picking, pressing, and fermentation will produce excellent wine.

• Let us recall that the parable of the vine occurs in the context of Jesus' Last Supper. After the multiplication of the loaves he had spoken of the true bread from heaven that he would give, and thus he left us with a profound interpretation of the eucharistic bread that was to come. It is hard to believe that in his discourse on the vine he is not tacitly alluding to the new wine that had already been prefigured at Cana and which he now gives to us—the wine that would flow from his Passion, from his "love to the end" (Jn. 13:1). In this sense, the parable of the vine has a thoroughly eucharistic background. It refers to the fruit that Jesus brings forth: his love, which pours itself out for us on the Cross and which is the choice new wine destined for God's marriage feast with man. Thus we come to understand the full depth and grandeur of the Eucharist, even though it is not explicitly mentioned here. The Eucharist points us toward the fruit that we, as branches of the vine, can and must bear with Christ and by virtue of Christ. The fruit the Lord expects of us is love—a love that accepts with him the mystery of the Cross, and becomes a participation in his self-giving—and hence the true justice that prepares the world for the Kingdom of God.  
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• Purification and fruit belong together; only by undergoing God's purifications can we bear the fruit that flows into the eucharistic mystery and so leads to the marriage feast that is the goal toward which God directs history. Fruit and love belong together: The true fruit is the love that has passed through the Cross, through God's purifications. "Remaining" is an essential part of all this. In verses 1-10 the word remain (in Greek minein) occurs ten times. What the Church Fathers call perseverantia—patient steadfastness in communion with the Lord amid all the vicissitudes of life—is placed center stage here. Initial enthusiasm is easy. 
•   Afterward, though, it is time to stand firm, even along the monotonous desert paths that we are called upon to traverse in this life—with the patience it takes to tread evenly, a patience in which the romanticism of the initial awakening subsides, so that only the deep, pure Yes of faith remains. This is the way to produce good wine. After the brilliant illuminations of the initial moment of his conversion, Augustine had a profound experience of this toilsome patience, and that is how he learned to love the Lord and to rejoice deeply at having found him,
• If the fruit we are to bear is love, its prerequisite is this "remaining:' which is profoundly connected with the kind of faith that holds on to the Lord and does not let go. Verse 7 speaks of prayer as an essential element of this remaining: Those who pray are promised that they will surely be heard. Of course, to pray in the name of Jesus is not to make an ordinary petition, but to ask for the essential gift that Jesus characterizes as "joy" in the Farewell Discourses, while Luke calls it the Holy Spirit (cf Lk 11:13)—the two being ultimately the same. Jesus' words about remaining in his love already point ahead to the last verse of his high-priestly prayer (cf. Jn. 17:26) and thus connect the vine discourse with the great theme of unity, for which the Lord prays to the Father at the Last Supper.