“Apart From Me You Can Do
Nothing”
Wednesday:
Fifteenth Week of the Year: July 13, 2016
Year
II: Isaiah 10:5-16; Psalm 94:5-15; Matthew
11:25-27
The Responsorial
Psalm gives an assurance we need to heed when the Church appears hopelessly
corrupt or ineffective: “The Lord will
not abandon his people” (Psalm 94).
In Isaiah
10: 5-16 God declares he is going to humble Assyria, at whose hands God’s
People had suffered defeat and oppression because they refused to live as God’s
law had taught them. God accepted that Israel should get what they deserved
from Assyria, since they had brought it on themselves, but God saw this was not
what Assyria intended. “Rather, it is in [Assyria’s] heart to destroy, to make
an end of nations….”
Furthermore, Assyria did not recognize
that God was in charge. “For he says, ‘By my own power I have done it, and by
my wisdom.’” Therefore, “When the Lord has finished… [what he decreed for]
Jerusalem, he will punish the arrogant boasting of the king of Assyria and his
haughty pride.”
At times it appears God is allowing evil
to triumph over his Church. Usually, except for the most blatant persecutions,
the Church brings her humiliation on herself by not being faithful to the
principles of the Gospel or to her mission, especially to the poor. And
sometimes it is because the Church’s ministers themselves — bishops, priests
and laity — have acted as if they had all the knowledge and prudence required to
live up to their responsibilities as pastors, teachers, parents and workers of
every kind. Every Christian is called to minister in a variety of ways. But
every Christian needs to do so in conscious, humble dependence on God and
collaboration with others. If they do not, “the
Lord will not abandon his people,” but it may look like he has!
Matthew
11: 25-27
reminds us that if we do what is divine we will experience ourselves as divine.
But we can only do what is divine through union with Jesus. Only Jesus, God the
Son, can truly know God as “Father.” And the only way he can “reveal him” to
creatures is to give us a share in his own divine life and knowledge. We know
God as Father because we are filii in
Filio, sons and daughters in the unique and only begotten Son. Because we
are in Christ, we call God “Abba” as
he does.1 And in Christ we
are called to bear the fruit of
divine life, “life to the full.” But we can do nothing of divine value unless
Jesus does it with us, in us and through us.
I am the vine,
you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit,
because apart from me you can do nothing. 2
Humble union of heart with Jesus Christ is the absolute
essential for the ministry of “life to the full.” It also gives us the experience of that life.
Initiative:
Give God’s life: Be a “priest in the Priest.” Stay conscious of Christ
acting with you, in you and through you.
Footnotes:
1Galatians
4:6.
2John 15:5.
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