YEAR B: HOMILY FOR THE 5TH SUNDAY OF EASTER (4)

YEAR B: HOMILY FOR THE FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER YEAR B

HOMILY THEME: “JESUS SAID TO HIS DISCIPLES, ‘I AM THE VINE, YOU ARE THE BRANCHES.’” (John 15:5)

BY: Fr. Robert deLeon, CSC

 

HOMILY:

John 15:1-8

The memory has been with me for over 20 years, surfacing to consciousness now and then when picking up my rosary beads, when they become once again a bridge linking an earthly burden with heaven’s strong and waiting arms. It’s a story about our connectedness through prayer, our connectedness to Christ, the True Vine. Back in spring 1997, after months of experience, I had learned just how grimy they could be and how dirty my hands could get, so I’d taken to wearing rubber gloves as I waded up to my wrists in the assorted colors before me. And my mood had to be just right for the task since, besides the dirt, there were also the tangles. It took far more patience than I usually had to trace the winding lines back to the point of origin so that they could be separated. But for several evenings each week, for an hour or so, I let my imagination wander through the lives once entrusted to the articles before me.

The box of them in my lap, the grimy tangle I gloved to touch—these discarded rosaries, rather than being assigned to the trash bin, had been sent to us because their owners knew they were holy objects, that they had born the hopes, dreams, fears and sufferings of lives I could only imagine. And the dirt I protected myself from with gloves was, in reality, the accumulated memory of moist, anxious fingers and the now dry well of tears once shed.

Reaching into the box once again, my searching fingers uncovered a small black rosary in a plastic case with a folded note inside. It read, “This rosary was carried by a soldier during World War One. It helped see him safely home.” My imagination transported me to a muddy foxhole; sounds of shelling encircling me. The rosary in my gloved hand almost came alive as I felt in the beads a calming and consoling presence. They almost spoke: “Be not afraid; I am with you.” I took off the gloves, wanting to be closer to these beads, to this soldier’s prayer, to God’s comfort, and I ran the beads through my own fingers. Could I, even now and so far removed, feel the divine strength they once offered a young soldier on a far-away battlefield? As those beads moved one by one through my fingers, I realized that I was not so far removed from that soldier, from those anxious hands, from the God he called to. The time and place had changed, but the same human need cried out in me, and the same protecting God heard those cries. We were one, the soldier and me, separate branches on the same stalk of humanity, both anchored in the creating hand of God, the vine, and both reaching skyward toward heaven’s beacon. For a very long moment, I held the beads and thanked God for protecting the soldier’s life.

Putting the rubber gloves back on, I dug into the tangled pile once again. I pulled from it a dulled crystal rosary, its silver crucifix now black. Who, I wondered, had last held this in her clenched hand? What did she want of God? How did God answer her prayer?

As I focused again on the box of rosaries in my lap, a prayer emerged: Jesus, this jumble of beads is probably much like the lives they came from—perhaps tangled and twisted, but all most surely thirsting for want of you. Take these lives, branches of your creating hand, and rescue the tangled, twisted and thirsting. Help them all as they reach heavenward to you, the only source of life. Please see them all safely home.

Discover more from Catholic For Life

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading