Fruitful Discipleship. Sherry A. Weddell

of our acts of obedience is largely unknowable by us in this lifetime. Any apparent fruit that is visible to us or to others is only a small glimpse of the infinitely larger network of grace that encompasses all of time and space and is known only to God. We will begin to understand the mystery of grace only when we stand before him.

      I got a glimpse of the “fruit of the fruit of my fruit” a few years ago, when I received a letter from a woman I had never met. “Emily” wrote that she had driven hundreds of miles to attend a Called & Gifted workshop put on by a small team in another state. As a result of the workshop, she said that she was in the midst of missionary training and would soon be sent to Africa to train medical personnel to receive and distribute AIDS medication. Emily turned out to be a recently retired pharmacist with an epidemiology background who had not known what to do next. She had never imagined becoming a medical missionary — until she went through the gifts-discernment process and realized that she might have been given a charism of Missionary. Emily wrote to thank me for the discernment process that changed the course of her life.

      I was especially moved when I considered what God might do through her obedience. Emily’s part in making AIDS medication available throughout a small African country could save the lives of an entire generation and change the course of the whole nation. A few days later, I attended a parish gathering during which I had the chance to share Emily’s story. A woman across the table from me became very excited. She exclaimed, “Emily’s like Esther in the Bible! Who knows but that she was brought into the world for such a time as this?”

      Of course! But aren’t we all?

       The Vine and the Branches

      Scripture describes the Church as both the Father’s cultivated field and as the vineyard in which Jesus is the “True Vine.” The Holy Spirit is the sap that runs between the Vine and branches.

      In our Tradition, the imagery of fruit-bearing is used of both the Church and the Gospel. The Church is called the “Vine” because she is the mystical Body of Christ who shares in the life of her Head,⁴ while St. Paul writes of the Gospel “bearing fruit and growing” (Colossians 1:6). The life-changing power of Jesus the True Vine is communicated through his Great Story to those who are not yet disciples and to those who are. Speaking the name of Jesus has great spiritual power:

      But the one name that contains everything is the one that the Son of God received in his incarnation: Jesus…. The name “Jesus” contains all: God and man and the whole economy of creation and salvation. To pray “Jesus” is to invoke him and to call him within us. His name is the only one that contains the presence it signifies. Jesus is the Risen One, and whoever invokes the name of Jesus is welcoming the Son of God who loved him and who gave himself up for him. (CCC 2666)

      Jesus’ name actually contains his presence and whoever invokes Jesus’ name is welcoming him. Which is why naming Jesus with love and telling his story bears fruit. (And why it is sinful to take Jesus’ name in vain.)

       The Vine and the Graft

      You and I are not natural branches of the Vine. Rather, we are foreign branches grafted onto the Vine (see CCC 1988). What is fascinating about this image is that, in nature, the branch grafted on — not the rootstock vine — determines if and what quality of fruit is borne.

      For instance, if I plant a white rose — perhaps a Pope John Paul II hybrid tea rose, which, by the way, has a gorgeous aroma — that has been grafted onto the rootstock of a red rose (as is true of most American roses), it will bear only white roses. But if my beautiful JPII graft on the upper part of the rose is killed by a Colorado blizzard, I will never see another white rose. The surviving root stock buried in the earth will be doing all the fruit-bearing from now on, and it is going to be red!

      But in the Kingdom, it doesn’t work that way. In John 15, the Vine changes the spiritual DNA of the graft so that the naturally fruitless graft can bear fruit. In the heavenly Vineyard, the branch does not determine the quality of the fruit, the Vine does. Bearing good fruit is the evidence that the nature of the grafted branch has been fundamentally transformed by its union with the Vine. In short, we only bear fruit if we are transformed by our union with Christ. We only bear fruit if we are living as disciples.

       The Wild Olive and Root of Israel

      Another powerful image from Scripture is that of Gentile Christians being “wild olive” branches grafted on to the root stock of Israel in baptism (see Romans 11:13-24). The fruit of the olive tree was precious in the ancient Mediterranean because olives were the single most important food item, used not only for cooking and healing but also as a cosmetic, as soap, and as the most important source of light.

      In the ancient world, branches of cultivated, fruit-bearing olive trees were often grafted onto a rootstock of “wild” olive. The wild olive root would never bear edible fruit itself but would supply the “good,” cultivated branches with nutrients so they could bear fruit. No ancient Greek farmer would graft a wild, non-fruit-bearing branch onto cultivated rootstock because no edible olives would be produced!

      But once again, the impossible is possible in the Kingdom. We wild, unproductive Gentile branches do not bring fruitfulness to the tree of Israel. Rather, the tree makes our unfruitful branches fruitful by transforming them with God’s life-giving supernatural power. Our spiritual “DNA” is altered by being grafted into the life of Jesus Christ, the Messiah of Israel.

      By this power of the Spirit, God’s children can bear much fruit. He who has grafted us onto the true vine will make us bear “the fruit of the Spirit: … love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” “We live by the Spirit”; the more we renounce ourselves, the more we “walk by the Spirit.” (CCC 736, emphasis added)

      If we remain “in Jesus” and Jesus in us — if that graft is being transformed by the DNA of the Vine — we will bear much fruit.

       What Fruit Looks Like

      There is a whole set of spiritual corollaries that go with this process of transformation through union with the Vine. If we remain in Jesus and his word and Jesus remains in us, then:

      • We bear much fruit, fruit that will remain.

      • We show that we are disciples.

      • We keep his commandments.

      • We remain in his love.

      • It brings the Father glory.

      • Jesus’ joy will be in us.

      • Our joy will be complete.

      • Our prayers will be answered (see John 15:1-16).

      That sounds like a great deal to me. In meditating on this passage, I was especially struck by verse sixteen, which linked bearing fruit to having our prayers answered. Obviously, prayer itself is enormously powerful and can change the course of history. John Wesley famously said that “God does nothing except in answer to believing prayer.”⁵ But I am also sure that one of the reasons that our prayers will be answered is that the fruit you bear will turn out to be the answer to someone else’s prayers!

       Faith and Fruit

      The root stock of the Vine and the cultivated olive are full of the life and sap of the Holy Spirit. And that life and sap is truly and reliably given to us by the means Jesus bestowed on the Church: the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit given to the baptized, the sacraments, the liturgy, the Scriptures, and many other gifts he has given us in and through his Body. That is why the Catechism says of the liturgy:

      A sacramental celebration is a meeting of God’s children with their Father, in Christ and the Holy Spirit; this meeting takes the form of a dialogue, through actions and words. Admittedly, the symbolic actions are already a language, but the Word of God and the response of faith have to accompany and give life to them, so that the seed of the Kingdom can bear its fruit in good soil.