What does it mean to live in Christ? That is a question the answer to which I found fulfilled in the readings of Sunday yesterday.
In the book of Acts, we can witness God’s grace transforming Paul, previously known as Saul. Saul was a persecutor of the Church and approved the stoning of St. Stephen, traditionally venerated as the protomartyr: the first martyr of Christianity.
Saul’s mission was to destroy the Church, and he did so by dragging out men and women and handing them to the authorities. However, after his encounter with Jesus, Paul’s zeal for Jesus made him a target of persecution and led to his eventual killing.
God’s transformative grace made Paul one of the most important preachers of the Christian faith, a key instrument in expanding Christianity to all corners of the world.
Living in Christ is a call to love by word, deed and truth. We declare our faith by word: “I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people.” By deed, we obey God in keeping His commandments to “believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another just as he commanded us“.
In truth, we give ourselves to the service of others, not by obligation or guilt but by imitating Jesus, who says, “I am the way and the truth.”
As we follow in His footsteps, we remain in Him and He in us, not by our strength but through the grace of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, which has been bestowed upon us by the Father and the Son.
Living in Christ is to bear fruits. Living a faithful spiritual life means having fellowship with Christ. He is the true vine that nourishes us through His mystical body, with the Eucharist.
Without Jesus, our lives will wither. He said: “Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit because without me you can do nothing.”
A branch connected with Jesus produces the fruit of the Spirit, such as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, as the Apostle Paul describes to the Galatians.
However, when we do not remain in Jesus, we become vineyard pests, which the Father, the vine grower, must cut off to protect the good branches.
But the good news is that when we repent, the vine grower restores us to the vine so we may glorify Him in the bearing of good fruit. If we do not, we become branches that are only good to feed fire.
Let us pray: O Lord, we ask for your assistance in living in Christ. May we participate in the Eucharist to remain united with Him. May we acknowledge and correct our faults, confess our sins, and bear good fruits.
Photo: A grape picker pours grapes into a truck during harvest at a vineyard of the “Tinto Figuero” winery in La Horra of the Ribera del Duero region, Burgos, Spain, 8 September 2022. (Photo by CESAR MANSO/AFP via Getty Images.)
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