27th Sunday A
St. Colman’s Cathedral, Cobh
8th October 2023
“To whom or what does your heart belong?”
My friends,
Allow me to name the title of some songs that are familiar to you.
The banks of my own lovely Lee
The Hills of Donegal, Galway Bay,
Dublin’s Fair City, New York, New York,
I left my heart in San Francisco
There is an Isle ……….. I could go on …
What all have in common is a love, a passion for a place and its people – places and people who excite a sense of connection and belonging that goes to the core of life. These places and people have a depth of care and concern whereby one doesn’t feel alone on life’s journey, where we feel at home. We feel we belong.
The readings to-day invite us to reflect on the image of the vineyard as a metaphor for life. The vineyard as a place of blessing of rich growth and abundance – all made possible by the diligent care of the vinedresser. Good viniculture requires careful pruning of the vine if it is to flourish and prosper.
In St. John’s Gospel in Chapter 15 Jesus speaks of himself as the vine and his Father as the vinedresser. He goes on then to speak of the disciples as a branch of the vine that can only have life in and through him. A reality which leads to the invitation “Make your home in me, as I make mine in you”
“I am the vine, you are the branches.
Whoever remains in me, with me in him
bears fruit in plenty,
for cut off from me you can do nothing” (John 15:4-5)
This image of the organic connection between us as branches and the Lord Jesus as the vine from which we have life, helps us read the Gospel to-day with a new appreciation of what this generation and many others before us have done to the good news that is Our Lord, Jesus Christ.
This generation and others in our greed and arrogance have killed the message and messenger of the Gospel because it stands in our way – because it challenges our life-style, because it questions the consequences of our behaviour and actions. There are many who proclaim with glee that Christendom is dead and good riddance.
And yet quoting the final lines of the Gospel
“It was the stone rejected by the builders
that became the keystone
This was the Lord’s doing,
and it is wonderful to see?”
As disciples we can take heart. When it seems that so much is disintegrating and falling apart. This is not an end but a time of new beginning. The work of the vinedresser isn’t finished yet.
