Readings: Acts of the Apostles 9:26-31; Psalm 21; 1 John 3:18-24; John 15:1-9
God is working his purpose out using instruments and situations that seem very unpromising. Saul returns to Jerusalem and, understandably, people there are afraid of him. He had been persecuting them vigorously and now he comes back preaching the gospel? Barnabas plays his part as reconciler and helps Saul to integrate somewhat. But it does not work, by the end of the first reading there are people determined to kill Saul. So they decide it is better for him to go elsewhere and they send him back to Tarsus, his home city. Perhaps it is not intentional but there is a certain irony in what comes next: with the sending away of Saul, the churches were left in peace. There is much more hassle to come with this difficult personality, Saul who becomes Paul. There will even be a parting of the ways between Paul and Barnabas, who was so kind and helpful in getting Paul's career as a Christian preacher underway.
We see all through the Acts of the Apostles, and it has been said before in these pages, that things are happening always on two levels. There is the level of human personalities, decisions, actions and conflicts, it is a very human history on that ordinary human level. But there is also the level of God's plan which is being infallibly worked out through those personalities and actions, and often in spite of them. A recent example was the fact that the first persecution of Christians - what must have seemed like catastrophe - led to the gospel going out from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria, thus fulfilling the prophecy Jesus made at the beginning of the book, Acts 1:8.
As with the Christians of those early days, so with us. There are our personalities and decisions, our actions and conflicts, our limitations and efforts, even our sins - in and through all of that we believe God is working out his purpose for our lives, for the world, for the Church. Our task is simply to remain in Him and to share to the extent that we can, and that his grace makes possible, in the working out of God's plan, the building of his kingdom. We are branches of the vine that is Christ and can do nothing without him. As long as we remain in him and he remains in us we will bear much fruit.
His remaining in us is guaranteed and the guarantee is confirmed once again in today's reading - we have received the gift of God's Word and God's Spirit (the consolation of the Holy Spirit, first reading; the Spirit that he has given us, second reading; you are pruned already by means of the word that I have spoken to you, Gospel reading). So the Word and the Spirit, the gifts of God, Son and Spirit - these have been sent to us and they are with us always, to the end of the age.
What about us remaining in him? It is the theme that recurs as Jesus speaks of the vine and the branches: remain in me, I in you. We do it by faith and prayer, by participating in the sacramental life of the Church, by charity. We are to keep his word and believe in him: faith. We are to ask what we will and we will get it: prayer. We are to participate in the sacramental life of the Church: we find this controversially presented in John 6. And our love is not to be just words or mere talk but something real and active. Then we are living the kind of life that he wants - believing in the name of Jesus and loving one another as he told us to - and that is what it means to remain in him.
It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me: Paul says this later, in his letter to the Galatians. But it is always in 'Paul' that Jesus lives: that man, that personality, that mind and freedom. So too with ourselves: we are sure of the gifts of God, that God remains with us. All that is asked of us is that we remain with God and how to do that is clear: faith and prayer, sacramental life and charity. Doing those things we will be disciples of Jesus, will bear much fruit, and our lives will glorify the Father.
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