A reading from the holy Gospel according to John
Jesus said to his disciples: “Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. 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.”
In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells the disciples to remain in him. In this short passage, John uses the word remain eight times. In telling the disciples to remain in him and that they can do nothing without him, Jesus is boldly declaring his divinity. Who but God has the authority to say to a person “without me you can do nothing”? The result of remaining in him is this: “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.” What is it I can ask God with complete confidence to be done today?
God, show me what it means to remain in you as a branch remains on a vine. It makes me uncomfortable to hear that whatever does not bear fruit in me will be taken away, yet Jesus says that you prune that branch that does bear fruit only so that it bears more. To measure as the human mind conceives is to use numbers and percentages and units, which leads to incompleteness, but your measurements, God, are not my own faulty ones. Please, Lord, let me have less confidence in my way of measuring and more and more confidence in your superabundant grace and its effects in me.
Remain in me, Lord; take away whatever branch that does not remain on the vine. Let your words remain in me.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.