The Living One

Julián Carrón —During the Easter season, the parable of the vine and the branches dominates the liturgy. The Easter context helps us understand the meaning of this parable existentially and also allows us to understand how we can experience the Resurrection today.

To understand the Church’s pedagogy, we must put ourselves in the place of the disciples and be surprised by what happened to them.  They were sad, like Mary Magdalene, who cried at the door of the empty tomb, or disappointed, like the disciples of Emmaus, or afraid, like the disciples who were locked in their houses for fear of the Jews. The defeat of their Lord completely consumed them. You could see it in their movements: they were beginning to return home disappointed because the adventure they had started with Jesus in Galilee was over. At best, they could go to the tomb, like the Magdalene, to anoint the body as a sign of their devotion, just as we bring flowers or decorate the tomb of a loved one. Or they could recall their adventure with him, as when something happens to us that leaves no definitive trace and only the memory remains to be told to the grandchildren.

In these circumstances, the unexpected happened: Jesus came and surprised them with his presence. With him alive, everything changed. His living presence made a new beginning possible. The new beginning could be seen in the fact that this presence invested their whole life. You could see that it was real — not an imagination or an invention — by the newness that it brought to them, by the fact that it changed them, that it overcame their paralysis, their fear, their disappointment, their sadness, and made them protagonists again.

Only by empathizing with the disciples can we understand, from their experience, the existential meaning of the image we have just heard: “I am the true vine. They would well understand the meaning of this expression! It would be impossible for them to reduce it to a mere image. “I am the true vine” was meant for them to recognize: “I, the living Jesus, present before you, am the source of the new, true life, overflowing with joy, freedom and peace, which you see happening in yourselves with surprise and which is so visible that it surprises even others, even those who do not believe.” “Life [they might think] is you, Christ, who fills our lives with your life, with an incomparable fullness that leaves us speechless!” Only those who have experienced the fullness of the presence of the beloved, the newness that he unexpectedly introduces into life, can have an idea of what we are talking about, a presence that suddenly enters our lives. So, we are all invaded by this presence. What was the experience of St. Paul, the persecutor, to say: “For me to live is Christ” (Phil 1:21) or: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20)? (Gal 2:20)

The first surprise for them was to encounter the change that had taken place in Jesus himself. The One who had been crucified, dead, and laid in the tomb appeared before their astonished eyes full of life, not the former life to which Lazarus had returned, but the true life. This life no longer ends, the life that can transform even the disciples’ lives through His living presence. It was really him, a living one! Who was so full of life that he transmitted it to others by contagion, by living, by being alive. The resurrected Jesus showed before any reflection that he was a source of life, filling those who recognized him with life. What do we want when something unique happens in our lives? We don’t want it to end; we want it to last forever. The only one who can really guarantee something eternal is the one who has ‌life that doesn’t die, that doesn’t fail. Never. Because death no longer has power over him.

And so we ask ourselves, how can we not lose everything good that comes our way? If He is life, the only way not to lose Him - Jesus tells us again — is to abide in Him. What does it mean to abide? We see it documented by the disciples: to remain in relationship with Him, in His presence, so that we can see the effects that this presence has, as when we stand before the Beloved and see the newness that He brings to our lives. The newness that He brings to life, we see as soon as we detach ourselves from Him. As soon as we turn away, we realize the preciousness of that presence and worries invade us again, by fears, by an uneasiness that we can’t overcome with our poor attempts.

Then everything else takes over and we begin to experience lack, as when we feel nostalgia for our loved one. Paradoxically, the lack, the worries that invade us‌ or the emptiness that we feel can become the most precious resource to return to Him, like the child who returns to his mother because he needs her to be himself. Any sorrow, any sadness, any pain that we feel are signs of the absent good that’s entered our lives, and they become clues to returning to Him.

This was well understood by those for whom Christ isn’t just an empty word or a to-do list but a decisive presence for life! Someone like St. Benedict understood this well when he urged his monks to “put nothing before the love of Christ” if they didn’t want to lose the best of life.

Only such an experience makes us understand what it means existentially: “The branch [that is, we] cannot bear fruit of itself unless it remains in the vine, and neither can you unless you remain in me [in relationship with me].” We understand this as soon as we move away from Him, for ‌the fruit originates only in Him, as Jesus again insists: “Without Me you can do nothing. How liberating these words become! They illuminate from within the experience, because we can’t give ourselves that life which comes only from Him. We need not be angry with ourselves or with the things that don’t give us the life they promise. On the contrary, these experiences make us realize that everything we do or possess is too little to answer our desire for life. And so, instead of blaming ourselves or the things that don’t satisfy us, we take the opportunity to understand the reason for our grief or sadness. We miss Him! We miss the presence that fills life. It is as if Christ is saying to us from within our experience, “Don’t take it out on anything. It’s I that you miss in all that you taste.
Two days ago, I saw a grandmother with her granddaughter in her arms, and as soon as she tried to put her in the crib, the child woke up because she was separated from her relationship with her. The grandmother’s astonished comment struck me: “When she loses the human warmth of the relationship with the presence that makes her herself, she wakes up.
Or like a boy I passed in the hallway of the school where I teach who was crying desperately because social services had told him he had to go into the community and separate himself from the people who had made him experience a new life because of the way they looked at him. These presences were crucial for him. It was enough for me to make him aware that he was no longer losing them for him to change his face. How we can see from people’s experiences what kind of relationship we need to live. With his resurrection, Jesus was forever introduced into history as the beginning of a new life. Only those who recognize Him and make room for Him in their lives can see how real He is.

Full of joy

St. Luke summarizes the content of the Gospel at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles: “In the first account [i.e., the first book Luke wrote: the Gospel] I dealt with all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day he was taken up into heaven [...]. He showed Himself to them alive, after His passion, with many trials, for forty days, appearing to them and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God”.

So the disciples lived with Jesus by seeing Him live, act‌ and react in His earthly life. They had a long experience with him. How did this life together shape them? We see it in the question, “Those who were with him asked him, ‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel? But he answered, ‘It is not for you to know the times and seasons which the Father has appointed for His power; but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’”

It’s striking that after three years of living with Jesus, their only concern is when Jesus will take possession of His kingdom. Living with Him has kept their perspective of restoring the old Davidic monarchy, a kingdom according to human thinking. If it isn’t a visible kingdom, it’s nothing in their eyes. Jesus “displaces” the disciples until the last moment before his departure. The story that began with him will continue, but in a way that they can’t foresee: “You’ll receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you’ll be my witnesses to the ends of the earth.

“While they were looking at him, he was taken up to heaven, and a cloud hid him from their eyes. Being “lifted into heaven” has the meaning that Jesus had already announced: “I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God, and your God” (John 20:17). Jesus, entering the Kingdom of God, is again lifted and enters the divine world beyond the clouds. The one they had seen was crucified, laid in the tomb‌ and then resurrected. The Jesus who is lifted and enters the divine world enters with all his humanity.

“Let your Church, O Lord, rejoice with holy joy at the mystery which she celebrates in this liturgy of praise, for in Christ, who has ascended into heaven, our humanity [yours, mine] is exalted beside you.” God’s plan is thus revealed to us. Why did God create man, each one of us? 

Precisely for what we celebrate today: to share with us, with each one of us, his glory, his fullness. Christ takes our humanity to heaven today. We are not destined for the grave, we are not destined to disappear into nothingness! For this reason, St. Paul insists: “God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive again with Christ from the dead that we were in because of our sins, for by grace alone we’ve been saved. He also raised us with Him and seated us in heaven in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:4-6). Life is already alive, imbued with the newness that Christ introduces in us.

This explains why “The disciples returned to Jerusalem ‘full of joy’” (Lk 24:52). The fullness of joy testifies that those who live with the awareness of what we are celebrating today don’t live determined by Jesus’ absence, but by his presence that invests all of his humanity. 

He showed, finally, all his power by penetrating the humanity of his friends, and therefore now potentially ours as well, if we welcome Him as they do. By making us experience Him who truly makes us ourselves, what St. Paul says is definitively fulfilled: “all things, were created through Him and given Him,” that’s expecting the fullness that is revealed before our eyes today. Thus, all created things were destined to reach their fullness in Christ.

So much for the absence of the feast of the Ascension. It’s the opposite: an even more deeply rooted presence within us in an absolutely permanent way, so much so that he tells the disciples, “I’ll be with you all days until the end of the world.” This was the reason for their joy and is also the reason for our joy: that Christ is forever with us, making us partakers of his new, risen life. Entering into the depths of reality, Christ penetrates us down to the bowels, filling all life with new life. What a new consciousness of us the feast of the Ascension introduces us to, then. One who lives with this consciousness is never again alone. Loneliness is conquered forever.

We aren’t at the mercy of our misguided attempts at fulfillment, at happiness. He is our fullness, our happiness! This is understood by those who love and experience that the beloved “makes me more than myself.” Jesus left us to enter more deeply into the depths of ourselves. "He who descended is the same one who also ascended above all the heavens to fill all things." The disciples, aware of this, were overflowing with joy!”

Only in this way can we, like the disciples, fulfill the mission. "Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to every creature." Wherever they go, they will carry Him with them in the brightness of their eyes. "I will make my presence evident through the gladness of your faces," is that joy of the first ones. This is the form of how his kingdom happens now, now, as we walk through history, waiting for his return.

 This text collects some of the homilies delivered by Julián Carrón during the Easter season of 2024. The different sections don’t correspond to the chronology of the liturgy but to thematic groupings. The author hasn’t revised the text.
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