Today’s Gospel offers us an in-depth insight into what it means to be the branches locked in the God’s vine. ‘Remaining’, ‘dwelling’, ‘abiding’ in Christ. These are all translations of the Greek word meno. It suggests the kind of peace and stability that we associate with being at home, being in a place of care. Also, spiritual care, if we apply this to relationships. Meno opens up a number of characteristics usually associated with friendship. Unity of heart, unity of vision. Lastly, it indicates remaining in what you already have.

St Matthias, whom the Church commemorates today, is remembered for what he already had. He was chosen to replace Judas because he had the experience of having known Christ, having followed Jesus, having witnessed the resurrection. Because his election happens before Pentecost, the disciples cast lots to choose between him and Barsabbas. Today we don’t need to throw dice to know what the Holy Spirit thinks. He indwells in us. Where there is human nature, there is the Holy Spirit and He gives us the ability to share in God’s transforming vision of reality.

Reflecting on this passage made me remember a book that I have read as a teenager. What remained impressed in my mind is the image on the cover that resonates with the name of the book. It’s called Miracle of the Rose. The image is a pair of old-fashioned heavy rusty iron handcuffs and from them flourishing a splendid, very baroque style, very delicate pink rose.

The book is of a mid-20th century French writer, Jean Genet. You might have never heard of him; he is quite a controversial and even marginal figure in literature. We can even say controversial enough to have probably never imagined his name is ever going to be pronounced in a sermon.

The golden rule of writing is – if you want to be a good writer, write about what you know. Jean Genet was a thief, a homosexual - quite a Gospel figure, in a way – but, most of all, he was a good writer.

The book I remembered is an autobiographical novel informed by Genet's memories of his adolescence spent in the penal colony.

In a very fine French, he describes what most naturally can be seen as an unhealthy and filthy reality. A colony of little criminals, with broken psyche, coming from poverty, from dirt, from dysfunctional families and heading for the future that, realistically, is not very promising. You can see that was not his intention to romanticize anything.

And at the same there is a striking contrast between the reality that he is faithfully drawing, on one side, and on the other side – the strange, bizarre gentleness with which he writes about it. You see that the soul imprisoned, the soul that describes the prison life and morals – being part of them –is surprisingly pure and incredibly receptive to the beauty that you wouldn’t imagine finding there. In fact, the prison for him almost doesn’t exist. He describes it as home. He chooses the word “family” to talk about cells or unit. The guys lived in families: 30 children in one family, 20 in another family. He calls his unit his family.

Don’t understand me wrong. He is not a charismatic anti-hero, not a big philosopher. He is just someone who chooses to see in his cheerless past and somber present an occasion to reflect on the narrow ways of sanctity, on the mystery of birth and death, on how is it possible to undo the works of decay, on beauty, on love. On the love available to him. Mixed generously with the reality. On the love that flourishes in prisons. The love of an abandoned boy with a deformed childhood, and yet – love.

Prison, camp literature is such a thing that usually writers, who chose this genre, become known because of stories of atrocities, because they raise social issues of injustice, the hardships that a person lived through. Genet doesn’t witness to none of it, that’s not his goal. He takes responsibility for being where he is and who he is – someone who spent half of life travelling from one prison to another. What on earth made him a recognized writer? Only his choice to see in his own brokenness the mystery of life. Only this strange purity of soul that he managed to maintain while being a socially labeled sinner. What attracts the reader is his vision that transcends both his physical handcuffs and the spiritual ones - handcuffs put on himself by making wrong decisions.

In that going beyond, in the context of his own disfigured and twisted life, in physical confinement, in the confinement of sin, he is moving toward sanctity in his own strange way. This is what matters. The words of Christ apply to him. He did bear fruit in the way he could and this fruit will last.

As will last in eternity our own gesture of kindness and courage. Believe it or not, being branches means sharing one vine, one source of life with St Matthias, with me, with Jean Genet, with the neighbor who irritates you and with a politician of whose decisions you disapprove.

We are all bound by our sin and we are all invited to abide in Christ’s love that makes the roses grow even on the handcuffs of our lives. But in the life to come there will be no limits, beauty will not be mixed with suffering. Roses will have no thorns. Only the eternal fragrance of Christ that we can already now scent in the world. Absolutely anywhere you are there is a secret beauty waiting to be revealed, if you choose to see it.

“I reckon”, as says St Paul, “that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory that shall be revealed in us”.

Amen

St Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church, San Francisco