Continuing Your Own Transformation Into Your True Self.

 The Vine and the Branches

1. “I am the true vine and my Father is the vinegrower
2.  He prunes away every barren branch, but the fruitful ones he trims clean * to  increase their yield.
3. You are clean already, thanks to the word I have spoken to you.
4. Live on in me, as I do in you. No more than a branch can bear fruit of itself apart from me.
5. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who lives in me and I in him will produce abundantly, for apart from me you can do nothing:
6. A man who does not live in me is like a withered, rejected branch, picked up to be  thrown in the fire and burnt.”
7. If you live in me, and my words stay part of *you  you may ask what you will—it will be done for you.
8. My Father has been glorified in your bearing much fruit and becoming my disciples.
9. “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Live on in my love.
10. You will live in my love if you keep my commandments, even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and live in his love.
11. All this I tell you that joy may be yours and your joy may be complete.
12. This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you.
13. There is no greater love than this; to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
14. You are my friends if you do what I command you.
15. I no longer speak of you as slaves, for a slave does not know what his master is about. Instead I call you friends since I have made known to you all that I heard from my Father.
16. It was not you who chose me, it was I who chose you to go forth and bear fruit. Your fruit must endure, so that all you ask the Father in my name he will give you.
17. The command I give you is this that you love one another.

In using this agricultural image, Jesus is trying to tell us who we human persons really are. Who we really are, our “True Self” is a deep spiritual mystery. Clearly, our “True Self” is deeply and intimately connected to Jesus, as a vine and its branches are one, fully interconnected, plant. Just as the branches are totally dependent on the vine for life, we humans are totally dependent on Jesus for life itself. As we mentioned earlier, this is very good news indeed! It is the best possible news to learn we are totally dependent on a totally loving, totally powerful God, who wants only the best for us.

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