Catholic lectionary for 11 July 2005

King James Version (en)

King James Version (en)

Proverbs, Chapter 2, verses 1-9

¹ Wisdom promiseth godliness to her children

¹My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee;

²So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding;

³Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding;

⁴If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures;

⁵Then shalt thou understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God.

⁶For the LORD giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding.

⁷He layeth up sound wisdom for the righteous: he is a buckler to them that walk uprightly.

⁸He keepeth the paths of judgment, and preserveth the way of his saints.

⁹Then shalt thou understand righteousness, and judgment, and equity; yea, every good path.

Read more:Proverbs, Chapter 2

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2 Solomon shews, that they who diligently seek wisdom shall find it, Pro 2:1-9.
He shews the advantage of it, that it would preserve them from evil men, Pro 2:10-15.
And evil women, Pro 2:16-19.
And would lead them into, and keep them in the way of good men, Pro 2:20-22.

2:1 Hide - Lay them up in thy heart with care, as men do their choicest treasures.

2:3 Criest - To God, the only giver of it.

2:4 Seek her - With unwearied diligence and earnest desire and patient expectation.

2:8 Path of judgment - Righteous paths, judgment being here put for righteousness. And keeping of paths may be put for keeping them in their paths.

2:9 Then - When God in answer to thy desires hath given thee wisdom.Equity - All the parts of thy duty to man, as well as the fear of God.

John, Chapter 15, verses 1-8

¹ The consolation and mutual love between Christ and his members, under the parable of the vine

¹I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.

²Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.

³Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.

⁴Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.

⁵I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.

⁶If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.

⁷If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.

⁸Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.

Read more:John, Chapter 15

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15

15:1 I am the true vine - So the true bread, Joh 6:32; that is, the most excellent.

15:2 Every one that beareth fruit, he purifieth - by obeying the truth, Pe1 1:22; and by inward or outward sufferings, Heb 12:10-11. So purity and fruitfulness help each other.That it may bear more fruit - For this is one of the noblest rewards God can bestow on former acts of obedience, to make us yet more holy, and fit for farther and more eminent service.

15:3 Ye are clean - All of you, to whom I now speak, are purged from the guilt and power of sin; by the word - Which, applied by the Spirit, is the grand instrument of purifying the soul.

15:4 Abide in me - Ye who are now pure by living faith, producing all holiness; by which alone ye can be in me.

15:5 I am the vine, ye are the branches - Our Lord in this whole passage speaks of no branches but such as are, or at least were once, united to him by living faith.

15:6 If any one abide not in me - By living faith; not by Church communion only. He may thus abide in Christ, and be withered all the time, and cast into the fire at last. He is cast out - Of the vineyard, the invisible Church. Therefore he was in it once.

15:7 If ye abide in me, ye shall ask - Prayers themselves are a fruit of faith, and they produce more fruit.

15:8 So shall ye be my disciples - Worthy of the name. To be a disciple of Christ is both the foundation and height of Christianity.

NOTES

When speaking to His disciples about the Kingdom, Jesus constantly calls them to love one another. This is unsurprising if we recall that Christianity is nothing other than life in the Kingdom, and therefore life in love. Love, of course, is not the Kingdom's only characteristic. The life of the Kingdom is...

When speaking to His disciples about the Kingdom, Jesus constantly calls them to love one another (vv. 9-12, 17). This is unsurprising if we recall that Christianity is nothing other than life in the Kingdom, and therefore life in love. Love, of course, is not the Kingdom's only characteristic. The life of the Kingdom is also the breath of God that permeates it and those manifestations of God's power that accompany Jesus everywhere during His earthly ministry. Yet in our still not fully transformed world, the love characteristic of those who bear the Kingdom seems to be its clearest testimony.

Power, for example, is well known to the untransformed world. Indeed, in a world lying in evil there is sometimes even too much of it. Power can sometimes make people submit, but it cannot make them love. Relationships imposed by force, and therefore involuntary, are unsuitable for the Kingdom. Power in the fallen world will hardly be perceived as an alternative to the existing order. The same could be said of spiritual phenomena in themselves, for the fallen world too knows a peculiar kind of spirituality. The spiritual phenomena characteristic of fallen nature differ qualitatively in essence from the spiritual influences that proceed from the Kingdom, of course, but outwardly they can sometimes look alike, and to someone who sees only the outward appearance the difference may be imperceptible. Thus spirituality in itself does not necessarily mean that an alternative to the laws of this world has appeared.

For such an alternative to appear, everyone must be able not only to see clearly that Christ's disciples and followers possess a certain spirituality, but also to discern what it is. In this respect the witness of the love permeating every relationship in the Kingdom is the best, because mutual love visibly demonstrates to the world precisely what it does not have and what it lacks so greatly. Unlike power and spirituality as such, love can therefore become the alternative to the existing world order that the world both longs for and fears. It fears this alternative because, from the standpoint of the laws of our still untransformed world, relationships of love really are contrary to nature. Both nature and society, which has not moved so very far beyond it, follow different principles, relying on power, advantage, and efficiency.

It is no surprise that those who want to live differently in this world become a foreign body within it (vv. 18-19). But some are prepared at least to try to find an alternative, and so those who live by the laws of the Kingdom will face not only persecution. There will also be people ready to listen to their testimony and follow their path (v. 20). Nevertheless, Christ's disciples and followers should apparently neither try to escape persecution nor hope for their preaching to achieve mass success, for, in Jesus' words, “the servant is not greater than his lord.” Only the testimony is fundamentally important. Everyone decides for himself how to respond to it.

We are called to abide in the vine because, when separated from it, the branches are cut off from the source of life and quickly wither. The branches are free to break away, but they themselves will gain nothing from it. None of the branches grafted into this vine can...

Describing the Kingdom, Jesus turns to the image of a vineyard, a vine, traditional for Yahwism and Judaism. But into this traditional image He places a new meaning connected with...

Describing the Kingdom, Jesus turns to the image of a vineyard, a vine, traditional for Yahwism and Judaism. But into this traditional image He places a new meaning connected with the essence of the Kingdom that He brought into the world. Of course, there is also room here for the traditional understanding of the Kingdom as a place where only one will acts: the will of God, who created the world. It is no accident that Jesus says that the "prince of this world" "has nothing in Him": for the Kingdom He brought into the world does not exist according to the laws of this world, so that the "prince of this world" can have no power over it, even though the Kingdom, while abiding in our untransfigured world, constantly touches it.

But the image of the vine also becomes an image of relations within the Kingdom, where all are connected with one another and with Christ just as branches are on a vine. This bond is absolute, immediate, and organic: every branch is a continuation of the vine; if it is torn off, it dries up. All the branches live one life with the vine, fed with it by the same sap from one source. Evidently this is exactly how the inhabitants of the Kingdom are connected with one another and with Christ.

From this point of view, the Kingdom can be defined as a single space of relations linking all its inhabitants with one another, with Christ at the center. And it is precisely the fact of Christ's presence that makes the Kingdom the Kingdom. For in order for it to remain itself, such constancy of relations, such stability, is necessary as is unthinkable in the fallen world for the human will damaged by the fall. Only the will of the One who, being Man, remained untouched by sin can become the basis of the stable unity necessary as an indispensable condition for the existence of the Kingdom in our transfiguring, but not yet transfigured, world. This is what the Savior evidently has in mind when He says, "Without Me you can do nothing."

Of course, even in a fallen state a person can sometimes, with God's help, do something good. But to do anything at all for the Kingdom is possible only by being part of the Kingdom. And it is impossible to be part of it without spiritual unity with the One who constitutes its spiritual foundation, who is the spiritual core on which the Kingdom rests.

One end of this core is held by God, who raised His Son from the dead. At the other end are we, who consider ourselves Christians and try, as far as we can, to be Christians. And between us is the Kingdom, entering the world through us.

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