Yes, everything and everyone are within the vineyard but that does not necessarily mean they are attached to the vine. Christ, the vine, has its roots planted on land populated by believers and non-believers of the Christian faith, saints and sinners, those attached to Christ, the vine, and those detached from him by reason of anti-Christ attitudes and practices, of indifference, of immorality, rejection of the truth and the fundamental human values we must live by.
Obviously, the major challenge which needs an answer, is change. This change affecting the modern world today, in all its multiple segments, shows signs of death which have to be denounced. The ambivalence of the new frontiers implies a risk, namely, that certain absolute values like life are compromised. As Christians, our attachment to the Vine, Christ, faces the ambivalence of new frontiers. Among the multiple challenges confronting people today, we could mention those that were pointed out by Pope John Paul II in his Apostolic Letter, Tertio Milennio Adveniente as being "forms of anti-testimony and scandal" which have progressively become worse all through the Second Millennium and which at present have reached such a crucial stage that they have become the greatest challenge to anybody who feels obliged to react with an appeal for a return to normalcy by way of an admission of guilt and of asking pardon. This appeal could be directed to the leaders of the two powers, America and Great Britain, posing the question: Could there have been a solution to the problem of armaments besides an all out war? Of course there could have been and a solution which prevented them from turning the United Nations Security Council into a ‘Disunited Nations Insecurity Council’ forcibly.
Other divisions that are detached from Christ, the Vine, are the divisions between Christians, intolerance and violence, weaknesses of the members of the Church with the scandals of the clergy which have obscured the image of Christ – the highest example of love and humility and mildness, religious indifference and the loss of the transcendental meaning of things leading many to live as if God does not exist. In our domestic circles, the scandalous separations in families, in society, in government entities, and sadly, the unheard clamor of the most needy, the marginalized, victims of exploitation and injustice.
May all this in Your vineyard Lord who are detached from You as Vine of the Father by His Spirit attach to You. Show us the true nature of Your charity, not a sterile fear of doing wrong but a vigorous determination that all of us together attached to the mystical Vine be the branches contributing to the propagation of life, giving above all an ever-increasing awareness of Your omnipresence, a blessed desire to penetrate ever further and further into Yourself.
All joy, all achievement, the purpose of our being and all our love of life depend ultimately on the basic vision of the union between ourselves and God in Christ, the mystical Vine who gives us the assuring Word: "Whoever remains in Me and I in him, will bear much fruit, because without Me you can do nothing" (Jn 15:5).
Fifth Sunday of Easter, John 15:1-8.