Knitting a Conundrum

I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing. John 15:5

Think about what this says.

We Christians are part of the unit that is the Body of Christ. He is the rootstock that we are all grafted into. In him is our life, nourishment, our ability to grow. Through him, we will bear much fruit, because he works through us. It's not our ability to get things done, but him working through us.

But we need to remember another verse as well:

Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. John 15:2

It is possible to refuse the new life that comes from Christ, and as we do so, we wither, bearing no fruit. God the Father, who is the Vinedresser, will cut us off totally. But those of us who draw our nourishment from Christ, the Father shapes us in the ways which can transform us,

Jesus stands for all victims of brute force. In the twentieth century itself we have seen again how inventive human cruelty can be; how cruelty, in the act of destroying the image of man in others, dishonors and destroys that image in itself. The fact that the Son of God took all this upon himself in exemplary manner, as the "Lamb of God", is bound to make us shudder at the cruelty of man, on one hand, and make us think carefully about ourselves, how far we are willing to stand by as cowardly or silent onlookers, or how far we share responsibility ourselves. On the other side, it is bound to transform us and to make us rejoice in God. He has put himself on the side of the innocent and the suffering and would like to see us standing there too.

Pope Benedict XVI while Cardinal Ratzinger