Today's Gospel

The Secret to Powerful Prayer

Welcome back to Radical and Relevant, where each day we explore the genius of the Gospel. Today's reading is from the Gospel of John 15:1-8. I am the true vine, and my father is the vinedresser. 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. You are already made clean by the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself. Unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches.

He who abides in me and I in him. He it is that bears much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers, and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you. By this, my father is glorified that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples. What is it that jumps out at you today? There's so many great things, right? Fruitfulness or lack of fruitfulness, getting thrown in the fire, obviously not ideal.

But this idea at the end, Jesus says, "If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you want and it shall be done for you." What does that mean? The interesting thing is, what does Jesus know in saying this? He knows that if you abide in him and his words abide in you, you're not going to ask him for anything that isn't in his will. That's why he can so confidently say, "If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you want, and it should be done for you because you'd be only asking for the will of God. You'd be only asking for things that are aligned with his plan, his glory, his goodness.

And so does he abide in us? Does Jesus abide in you? Does he abide in me? Partly, right? Because there's some parts of us that we don't want to surrender to Jesus. That's human nature. And there's times in our spiritual lives. We come to Jesus and we say, "Jesus, I'm 100% available. I'll do whatever you ask me to do. Just point me in the right direction." And in those moments of total surrender, it's a glorious thing.

But our human nature then, having given ourselves 100% to God, we tend to take ourselves back sort of like half a percent at a time. And then all of a sudden, we realize, "Well, no, I'm not actually 100% surrendered to God anymore. I'm 80% or 60%," or it could be much, much worse than that. And so, how surrendered to God are you at the moment? And how much of you are you allowing Jesus to abide in you? What aspect of your life do you tell God, "No, hands off that aspect. I want to do my stuff there. I want to be selfish there."

Because we love our sins, right? We really do. We love our sins. Some of our sins, we love them, and we don't want to give them up. And so we sort of pretend. We block that part of our life off or that part of our heart off, and we invite God to abide in us, but not in that little part right there. And today, what Jesus is saying, "No, let me abide in you completely and let my word abide in you." Then ask for whatever you want, and it'll be yours. Have a great day. Remember, Be Bold, Be Catholic.