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Prayer and reading Scripture are recommended gateways to attaining a more tranquil mentality needed before we engage the world to stimulate a change toward a more unified, God-centred culture.
January 28, 2025
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How can the world mend from scarring inflicted by polarization and increased social isolation?
Fr. John Meehan, SJ, suggests we turn to Jesus, the True Vine.
On Jan. 28, Meehan appeared in episode two of the Jesuits of Canada’s new live podcast series "Journeying Together". The director of the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary History at Trinity College, federated with the University of Toronto, guided a presentation entitled "Gnarled Yet Graced: Christ’s Call to Deeper Connection in a World That Pulls Us Apart".
Meehan drew motivation from John 15, a passage in which Jesus declares: “I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in Me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from Me you can do nothing.”
During a Jan. 24 interview with The Catholic Register, Meehan said the “gnarled and stunted” branches you come across when visiting a vineyard struck him as a potent and realistic symbolic image “of the hardship and suffering that we all face in this world, a world deeply in need of healing.”
Yet amid the deformities, the vine remains resilient.
“(It is) one that will grow regardless and will stretch out its shoots across (and) around boulders and branches and trees and fakes and it just keeps spreading,” said Meehan. “It's like the mind to spread and I would say that's in the nature of our faith as well to spread that love, that compassion, that mercy that God calls us to do.”
Meehan said he would call upon podcast listeners to stimulate a change toward a more unified, God-centred culture by reaching out to the people who “are alienated and lonely with a greater sense of urgency." However, before engaging in dialogue and encounter on the Lord’s behalf, the Jesuit said we must adopt a more tranquil mentality.
“First of all, slow down,” said Meehan. “We can't engage in this work if we're constantly rushing in a fast world. We need to slow down so that we can meet people where they are. We can meet God. We can ultimately encounter our truest selves.”
Prayer and reading Scripture are recommended gateways to attaining this serenity.
Meehan said he planned to champion Ignatian spirituality during his Gnarled Yet Graced presentation. One of the valued exercises from this spiritual tradition rooted in St. Ignatius of Loyola's (1491-1556) life experiences is taking moments out of your schedule to discern where you found God in your day.
The Catholic intellectual and historian is also a proponent of modelling Loyola’s love of spiritual conversation.
“We gather for Mass, we gather to pray and to support one another,” said Meehan. "How often do we meet with fellow Christians and really enter into spiritual conversation of where God has been moving not just in my life, but to discover where is God moving in our life, in the community of faith, in the Church? We saw that in the synod. It was an attempt to do that on a large scale. I think we could do that in our parishes as well.”
Meehan also endorses meditating upon Loyola’s 14 rules of discernment to consider how God is renewing and reconciling His Church today.
The "Gnarled Yet Graced: Christ’s Call to Deeper Connection in a World That Pulls Us Apart" will be published online in the coming days.
The Jesuits of Canada’s Journeying Together podcast is co-hosted by Fr. Jean-Francky Guerrier, SJ, and Scott McMaster, a lay partner serving the Jesuits’ Canadian province as director of advancement.
(Amundson is an associate editor and writer for The Catholic Register.)
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