Today’s Gospel reading of the vine and the branches offers us an opportunity to make a kind of “repetition,” to return to the same text which we heard proclaimed at Mass on Sunday, to allow this word of the Lord to sink into our hearts more deeply and bring greater fruit.
This dynamic of repetition is part of what it means to remain in the Lord Jesus. Returning to his words, even the same ones, can always be a source of life and freshness for those who turn to him, since the Lord is the one who has the words of everlasting life; he is the one through whom all things were made and who makes all things new. To remain in this sense is also to linger and tarry with the Lord in one’s heart, to desire to stay with him as with a beloved. For the Lord God is the one who shapes the human heart and knows it to its depths, and the human heart only finds peace and light by resting and remaining in God.
In prayer today, then, let us consider Jesus’s call to remain in him like branches on the vine. We might recall particular words that the Lord has spoken to us and which are worth returning to so that we might linger with them and let them sink deeper in our hearts. And let us pray for the grace to continually come back to the One who is the source of our life in the silence of our hearts.