Last Sunday (5th Sunday of Easter - Year B) and this Sunday (6th Sunday), the Gospel readings are taken from John 15. In the last Sunday's Gospel reading, Jesus described his object relations to us and to the Father as how the vine grower, the vine, and its branches are related. Now, in the Gospel reading for this Sunday, Jesus explains the essential quality of the object relations. And, it is agape, strong enough to make joyful self-sacrifice for our love objects. And, this is to perfect joy and love, aspects of fruit of the Spirit.
******
In the Gospel reading for the 5th Sunday
of Easter (Year B), John 15:1-8, Jesus described his relationship to the Father
and to us with a metaphor of the vine grower, the vine and its branches. The Father is the vine grower, Jesus, the
Son, is the true vine, and we are the branches attached to the vine. Now you can image that the Kingdom of God is
like a vine yard, where there is the true vine.
There may be other vine yards. But, none of vines
growing these places is the true vine.
These vine yards with false vines are where Satan likes to mislead us by
manipulating and corrupting our hearts and minds. To explain this with a
Buddhist’s Yogacara psychology (唯識心理学),
Satan likes to work on the Manas-vijnaana
(末那識), deep in our
mind, to create illusions to make us mistake
a false vineyard for the true vineyard.
Otherwise, we would seek a source of our security in material things,
falling into idolatry to live in a false sense of security.
Unless we choose to be misled and seek
false security in a false vineyard, we securely attach ourselves to Jesus, our
true vine, as it is the way that we abundantly bear fruit (John 15:2). As I
indicated in my May 5, 2015, blog article, “Post Resurrection Christological Revelation and Our Relationship to Him
through Eastertide Sunday Gospel Readings”, the
vine-and-branches-like object relation between Jesus and us are psychologically
characterized as what John Bowlby*
and Mary Ainsworth** describe as secure attachment.
As health psychological development of a
person stems from a secure attachment that a mother (or primary caregiver
substituting a mother) and her child forms, our healthy spiritual and faith
grows out of a secure attachment between God and us, through our secure attachment
to Christ. Tim Clinton and Joshua Straub
elaborate well on this topic in their “God
Attachment: Why You Believe, Act, and Feel the Way You Do About God” ***.
What Jesus metaphorically described as
the vine-branches relationship for the 5th Sunday of Easter Gospel
(Year B), John 15:1-8, is characterized with secure attachment. Just as a
healthy emotional growth stems from a secure mother-child attachment (Bowlby,
1982, Ainsworth, 1989), our faith and spiritual development comes out of the
secure attachment to God (Clinton and Straub, 2010).
Following this from the 5th
Sunday Gospel narrative (John 15:1-8), the 6th Sunday Gospel reading
for Easter (Year B), John 15:9-17, tells the essence of this vine-branch
relationship that characterizes our secure attachment to Christ. In this Gospel
narrative, Jesus reveals the quality of his relationship to the Father and us.
In other words, Jesus explains what holds the Father, Jesus, and us, together,
as the vine grower, the true vine, and the branches. And it is love, as ἀγάπῃ /agape, the way the Father loves Jesus, who loves us
in the same way.
In John 15:10, Jesus invites us to
remain in his love (ἀγάπῃ /agape)
just as he himself remains in the Father’s love (ἀγάπῃ /agape).
The web of the whole Christian object
relations stems from the Father’s
love. The web of the Christian object
relations, characterized with love (ἀγάπῃ /agape) that Jesus commands as mandatum novum (John 13:34) is another
image of the Kingdom of God, and its nucleus is the Father-Son (Jesus) love (ἀγάπῃ /agape).
The Father has sent the Son, Jesus, to
this world, through the incarnation in the immaculate womb of Mary, to ensure
that we are in and remain in His love, which the Son, Jesus, is securely
attached to. So, it has been Jesus’
mission to invite and bring us into his love, which is also the Father’s love,
in which he is securely in. This is what
Jesus means by saying that he is the true vine, as we are its branches (John
15:5). Remaining in Jesus’ love (John 15:10), which is also the love of the
Father, is what Jesus means by saying that we are the branches to the true vine
(John 15:5). Thus, there is a juxtaposition between John 15: 5 and 10, as the
true vine means the love of Christ.
As branches to a vine look similar, we
resemble Christ, our true vine, to which we are securely attached to, by
observing his commandment to love each other, as he loves us and the Father
loves him. This way, we become
abundantly fruitful branches.
So, what is a fruit we can bear?
According to Jesus, it is not just a joy
but the complete joy, which is his joy (John 15:11).
It is interesting to note that the joy
that Jesus describes as a result of observing his command of love in John 15 is
echoed by Paul in Galatian 5. Paul teaches joy as a part of multifaceted fruit
of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22), which characterizes our life by the Spirit.
And, this life by the Spirit, as Paul describes, is also the true freedom in
Christ (Galatians 5:1-15). For this, Paul reminds us of what makes us the
branches attached to the true vine, what keeps us in him and in his love. And
it is to observe the command of Jesus – to love one another as he has loved us
(Galatian 5:14; John 13:34; John 15:12).
But, for the complete joy (John 15:11),
which is echoed by Paul as the true freedom (Galatians 5:1-15), in remaining in
Christ’s love, in the true vine, loving one another as our neighbors, as our
fellow branches of Christ the true vine,
must be practiced in a way to lay our own lives for others (John 15:13).
This is because the bottom line of the love that Jesus practices for us is
sacrificial love, the love of the Good
Shepherd who lays his own life (John
10:11), as read in the Gospel for the 4th Sunday of Easter (Good
Shepherd Sunday).
What enables Jesus to lay his own life –
to practice sacrificial love – agape – for us is the quality of his own secure
attachment to the Father. It is that the Father and Jesus are in one (John
10:30), as the Father is in him, and he in the Father (John 10:38). In fact,
this is the very quality of our secure attachment to Jesus, as his branches, so
that we, too, can lay our own lives for one another. And this is the essence of
what characterizes the web of Christian object relations, which is what the Kingdom
of God on earth as it is in heaven is about.
That is why, once again, Jesus commands us: Love each other (John 15:17), so
that we can be fruitful branches, producing abundant manifold fruit of the
Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).
On the contrary, attaching ourselves to
a false vine, such as idol or what idol represents, and being misled by a false
spirit to a false vine yard, we would find none of these. In such a false vine
yard, there is only a narcissistic pleasure, which may lead to self-destruction
through addictive behaviors, as it would keep us blind to true joy and love.
Seek first the
Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all things we need will be added to
us (i.e. Matthew 6:33). In the Kingdom, we understand complete love, ἀγάπῃ/agape,
is our true joy, as we become able to practice joyful sacrifice for others,
reflecting these words of Padre Pedro Arrupe, SJ, “hombres por demás”(people for others), as our way of observing Jesus’
command of love to remain in his love – to be his branches.
*****
*Bowlby, J.
1982. Attachment and Loss: Attachment. Vol. 1 (2ndedition). New York: Basic
Book.
**Ainsworth,
M.D.S. 1989. Attachment beyond infancy. American Psychologist, 44:709-716.
***Clinton, T. E. & Straub, J. (2010). God Attachment: Why You Believe, Act, and Feel the Way You Do About God.
New York: Howard Books
No comments:
Post a Comment