Apart from Me, You can do Nothing

Gospel Reflection for May 1st, 2024

Icon of the True Vine, Courtesy of Wikipedia

Today’s Gospel is one of the great “I AM” statements of the Lord found in the Gospel of John. In this passage, Christ refers to Himself as the Vine by which we are sustained in life. If we live in Him then He will live in us, and we will bear fruit just as the branch which grows from the vine bears its fruit.

This is one of the most important analogies for the spiritual life found in all of Sacred Scripture. In truth, it explains man’s entire existence. We are contingent beings who participate in God for our very existence and for any good that we do. Without God, we cannot do anything for it is in Him that we “live and move and have our being.”¹ This truth extends to all that we do. When Christ tells us that:

“apart from Me, you can do nothing,”²

He is instructing us on how important it is to abandon ourselves to Him.

God is goodness itself. Any good that we do is simply a participation in the Goodness of God.³ In order for us to do any good, we must cooperate with God’s grace in our lives. This underscores our absolute dependency on God, the True Vine. Just as the branch cannot live apart from the vine, neither can we live apart from God.

There are many examples in our lives that this principle applies to, but I want to highlight one very important one, our life of prayer. Prayer is not solely a work of man toward God. I think many of us think this way. We try to motivate ourselves to prayer and perhaps even try to propel ourselves to the upper levels of prayer. But in reality, this is not something that we can do. Prayer, first and foremost, is a response to God. We respond to Him who has reached out first. Our motivation to pray does not find its source in us but in God Himself. So, what does that mean when we don’t want to pray? It means that we are placing something in the way of God. He is constantly calling us to a life of prayer and intimate union with Him. This call is the life of the Vine feeding the life of the branch. But so many times, we cut ourselves off from the Vine through distractions and sin that we cannot bear the fruit of prayer in our lives.

Apart from Him, we can do nothing.

We must rely on God to bring us to prayer and that means cooperating with the graces offered. If we are struggling to pray, we need to ask God’s assistance to pray. Prayer is the fruit that is born from branches attached to the Vine.

This can apply to everything in the spiritual life. We are not on our own. It is impossible for man to reach God on our power.

Apart from Him, we can do nothing.

We need to stop trying to do it on our own and abandon ourselves to God.

Apart from Him, we can do nothing.

1. Acts 17:28.

2. John 15:5.

3. “Hence from the first being, essentially such, and good, everything can be called good and a being, inasmuch as it participates in it by way of a certain assimilation which is far removed and defective... Everything is therefore called good from the divine goodness, as from the first exemplary effective and final principle of all goodness.” St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Ia, q. 6, a. 4.