CCQ# 80: Is there a second atrium in the works?
Yes! Slowing it’s coming together! The central theme for our second atrium is taken from John 15 when Jesus describes himself as the vine and we as the branches.
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. Abide in me, as I abide in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that withers and is thrown into the fire and burned…”
Our definition of abiding is nuanced. It can mean waiting, enduring, living within. Pope Francis says that to “abide” in Christ is another way of saying being close with Jesus, connected, attached and talking with him all the time. Abiding is an attitude, a habit, a willingness to let ourselves be led by God.
Bishop Ken Untener said that this image of the vine and the branches - and in particular the details about pruning - are meant to teach us about how kind and loving God is toward us. This may not be clear at first, because the scripture sounds a little rough when it speaks of cutting off the branches that don’t bear good fruit and throwing them into the fire. Once, he was giving a retreat at a Trappist monastery, where the monks live in the Benedictine tradition which can be summarized with the Latin phrase, “Ora et Labora” – which means “Prayer and Work.” They earn their own way by working, and they pray day and night, a majority of the time in silence.
In this particular Monastery, their work was cultivating plum trees; this was how they made their living. During the retreat Ken got to know one of the older monks whose specialty was pruning the plum trees. There were thousands of them, and he spent all day out there - every day deciding which branches were the ones that should be “pruned” in order to make the tree more capable of producing good plums. He was their expert “pruner” - something a machine could never do. One day Ken asked the old monk “You must be able to do a lot of praying and feel very close to God when you’re working out in the peace and quiet of this orchard.”
The monk stopped and a tear crept into his eye as he said, “Oh, indeed I do. I love these trees and I know them well. I always think of when Jesus talks about the fact that he is the vine and we are the branches, and that the Father prunes away the branches that are in the way. And while I’m pruning I say to the Lord:
‘Thanks for doing that to me. You have pruned me, and shaped me, and helped me become what I never could have become without you. I’m not perfect, and I know I need more pruning, but you are always there to make me more into your image.’ The Lord has done wonderful things for me, and I’d be nowhere without it.”
All of us, in our own lives, consciously and perhaps sometimes unconsciously, have a very clear order of priority concerning the things we consider important. Prayerfully abiding in God has a consequence in our lives; we empty ourselves of the many small or great idols that we have and in which we take refuge; we are “pruned” of the idols that we sometimes keep well hidden; the things that we often seek to base our security. A beautiful seed for our second atrium indeed.
No comments:
Post a Comment