Apart From Me You Can Do Nothing

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

We’re told in Scripture, “I can do all things in him who comforts me” (Phil. 4:13). Our Lord tells us in various ways how apart from Him we cannot do anything. We rely on Him for every ounce of energy, for every little thing that we can think, that we can do. We’re totally dependent on Him. We’re carried in the palm of a hand of a God who loves us.

He tells us in St. Matthew, “Can you not buy two sparrows for a penny? And yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father knowing. Why, every hair on your head has been counted. So there is no need to be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows” (Matt. 10:29-31).

We may be aware of our inadequacies, our failures, our weaknesses, our defects. But the fact that God is with us—that He tells us that we are, each one of us, of great value, each soul and the soul of everybody around us—helps us to have more confidence in Him.

“That is why I am telling you,” He continues in St. Matthew, “do not worry about your life and what you are to eat, nor about your body and what you are to wear. Surely life is more than food, and the body more than clothing!” (Matt. 6:25).

He encourages us to cast all our anxieties on Him because He’s omnipotent. He can do all things. We are one big zero, but He is the one beside those zeros. That makes us of great value.

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” we’re told in St. Matthew, “you that kill the prophets and stone those that are sent to you. How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you refused!” (Matt. 23:37).

Our loving Father tells us that He’s willing to do so many good things, but He needs our cooperation. He wants our correspondence.

In the storm in the boat, we are told, “There was a great gale, and the waves were breaking into the boat so that it was almost swamped. But he was in the stern, his head on the cushion, asleep. They woke him and said to him, ‘Master, do you not care? We are lost!’ And he woke up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, ‘Be still.’ And the wind dropped, and there followed a great calm. He said to them, ‘Why are you so frightened? Have you still no faith?’” (Mark 4:37-40).

Our Lord was with them in the boat. They had every reason to be calm, to be serene. But they had not yet learned that lesson.

And so, Our Lord uses this difficult storm which terrified the apostles—and they were experienced fishermen used to all sorts of storms that there were on that lake, but this was different.

They roused Him saying, “Do you not care that we are perishing?” (Mark 4:39). He let them go to that extent so that they would learn to trust completely in Him. “Why are you so frightened? Have you still no faith?” (Mark 4:40).

In our prayer, we could ask Our Lord for that grace to learn how to trust in Him a little more, to have more confidence in Him, to realize that God is beside us all the time, willing to help us, and that there’s nothing that we cannot do with His power.

“I can do all things in him who comforts me” (Phil. 4:13). He wants us to have that superiority complex, but also, an awareness that all our power comes from Him. On our own, we can’t do anything.

We’re like little children, powerless. But He wants us to have that spirit of little children who realize that on their own, they can do nothing. He tells us: “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

The sick man at the pool of Bethsaida—he’d had an illness that was thirty-eight years lasting. “When Jesus saw him lying there, he’d been in that condition a long time. He said, ‘Do you want to be well again?’

“‘Sir,’ he replied, ‘I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is disturbed, and while I am on the way, someone else gets down there before me’” (John 5:1-9).

And so, Our Lord cures the man. He lets him see that what seemed to be impossible has now become possible.

Like the apostles who were asked by Our Lord, “‘Can you drink of the chalice of which I am able to drink?’ And they said, ‘We can’” (Mark 10:38-39).

Full of optimism and a superiority complex, aware of their great defects and difficulties, their nothingness, but “we can,” we are able, because we know the power of God is there beside us to help us.

Jesus comes to us in all sorts of moments to show His power and to help us to see that with Him, everything can be solved. There are no problems that are out of reach, or no ideals or goals that are too far away.

“He said to the apostles in the boat, ‘Courage! It is me! Do not be afraid.’ Then he got into the boat with them and the wind dropped. They were utterly and completely dumbfounded” (Mark 6:50-51).

He had come to them walking on the waters. They had thought it was a ghost (Mark 6:49). They were frightened out of their lives. It wasn’t a ghost; it was Jesus.

Our Lord comes to us sometimes through difficult situations, crosses, contradictions, miscommunications, problems we think we cannot solve—all wanted by Him to teach us to turn to Him with faith, because He can do all things through us.

We’re told in St. Peter, “Through these, the greatest and priceless promises have been lavished on us, that through them you should share the divine nature and escape the corruption rife in the world through this disordered passion” (2 Pet. 1:4).

Jesus says, “That is why I’m telling you not to worry about your life and what you are to eat, nor about your body and how you are to clothe it. For life is more than food and the body more than clothing. Think of the ravens. They do not sow or reap; they have no storehouses and no barns; yet God feeds them. How much more you are worth than the birds! Can any of you, however much you worry, add a single cubit to your span of life?” (Luke 12:22-25).

And so, when we’re caught up in anxieties and concerns that, maybe, are robbing us of our peace, Our Lord wants us to turn to Him.

He says, “If a very small thing is beyond your powers, why worry about the rest? Think how the flowers grow; they never have to spin or weave; yet, I assure you, not even Solomon in all his royal robes was clothed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the flower which is growing wild today and is thrown into the furnace tomorrow, how much more will he look after you, who have so little faith!” (Luke 12:26-28).

Those three words —“how much more”—are very powerful words.

Lord, help me to have greater faith in your power. Help me to be more abandoned. Help me to lead a more trustful life, trusting in you that you will work out the problems. But you want me to turn to you, the source of all my power and ability to do anything.

One time Muhammad Ali—he was a heavyweight champion of the world in the 1960s—he had a title fight in Sydney, Australia. There was a press conference before the fight and one of the journalists said to him, “How come you talk so much about Allah. Now that you’re the heavyweight champion of the world, can’t you give Allah a rest for a while?”

Muhammad Ali reached out and with one hand he got the journalist by the lips and held them tightly closed; and with the other hand he got his nose and held it tightly closed. So, the guy couldn’t breathe. He was going a bit blue in the face.

Muhammad Ali asked him, in that difficult situation with your hands in your nose and the hands of the heavyweight champion of the world, “Would you like me to let go?” He nodded his head. And so, he let go.

Then he said to him, “Can you feel the air going down inside your lungs? And can you feel the oxygen being taken up by your hemoglobin?” The guy nods his head again.

“And can you feel the oxygen and the hemoglobin reaching every last cell of your little toe?” And the guy nods again.

He said, “God breathes into man the breath of life. In other words, every breath I take as the heavyweight champion of the world, is because God gives me that breath. He’s the basis of everything that I do and everything I achieve. And so, I’ll talk about Allah as much as I want.”

He had a point. Every day we trust in the omnipotence of God who makes the sun rise and makes the grass grow and puts food on the table and so many other things.

A little girl was asked in class once, and the class was asked, if somebody could come up to the front of the class and recite that Psalm that they had been saying many times, “The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall want” (Ps. 23:1).

They recited the whole Psalm, and the challenge was to see if somebody could recite the whole Psalm. And one little girl went to the front of the class, and she began saying, “The Lord is my shepherd, that is all that I want.” And then she sat down.

Little children can only do little things. They can only manage small things. We are like little children. We’re invited by God to be, more and more, like little children all the time, aware of our nothingness, but also wonderfully aware of this Father of ours who can solve all problems.

There were some people who were out in a small fishing boat one time, out on a big bay. But then a big storm arose, and the boat began to be tossed around the place by the waves, and the water was coming over the side of the boat and they got into difficulties.

They sent up a distress flare, because in the middle of this storm they were having these problems. But they were too far out, and nobody could see it from the land.

But then they noticed another bigger boat coming around the head of the of the bay, heading in towards shelter and the harbor, and they sent up another distress signal. That other boat was able to go over to them and to throw them a line and to pull them into land, and they lived happily ever after.

One of the people on board that smaller boat lived to tell the tale and said, “All our hope was in that bigger boat, and the fact that that bigger boat had the power to get through the waves and the power to be able to throw us a line and the power to be able to pull us into land.”

He said, “Also, we depended on the good will of the people in that boat because if they had all the power in the world but they didn’t have good will, they might have just passed us by and left us there. But all our hopes were fully satisfied because they had the power and they had the good will.”

God has all the power, and we know that God is infinitely good. He has all the good will to help us in all situations.

Lord, help me to have greater faith in you and to see that sometimes you permit things so that we might depend totally on you. Sometimes God may sweep the feet from under us and leave us hanging there. If He does, it’s because He wants us to look up. He wants us to learn what real faith and real hope and real trust are.

The Prelate of Opus Dei on one occasion said, “We will trust other people more if we trust in God.”

T. S. Eliot has a phrase where he said, “For us, there is only the trying. The rest is none of our business” (cf. T. S. Eliot, The Four Quartets). We’re like little children, we try to do this, and we try to do that, and this project and that undertaking and some other thing.

Little initiatives here, there and everywhere, because we have been called to try, to make a start, to try and do this thing, knowing that perhaps the fruits and the ending is beyond all our powers, but God wants us to begin, nonetheless.

But the rest is none of our business. God just wants us to sow the seeds. The fruit and the growing and the harvest, that’s all up to Him. Sometimes, other people will be the ones called to reap the harvest.

In the Book of Jeremiah, we’re told, “Yahweh says this, ‘Accursed be anyone who trusts in human beings, who relies on human strength and whose heart turns from Yahweh. Such a person is like scrub in the wastelands: when good comes, it does not affect him since he lives in the parched places of the desert, uninhabited, salt land.

“‘Blessed is anyone who trusts in Yahweh, with Yahweh to rely on. Such a person is like a tree by the water side that thrusts its roots to the stream: when the heat comes it has nothing to fear; its foliage stays green; untroubled in a year of drought, it never stops bearing fruit’” (Jer. 17:5-8).

Our Lord invites us to trust more in Him and to trust more in the people who are there to represent Him—His priests or His people that He appoints specifically as guides for our soul.

St. Thérèse of Lisieux says, “Help me to understand, always, that you are perfect happiness even when you seem absent.”

One of the ways that Our Lord invites us to turn to Him or to learn to trust Him a little more are those moments when He allows us to sense that He’s not there. But yet, we know with faith, that like a loving Father, He’s beside us all the time.

Fulton Sheen talks about how we should begin our prayer, turning trustingly to Him because He knows what is best.

St. Josemaría used to say, “Dios sabe más, God knows more.” His ways are not our ways.

That’s why petition is not the essence of prayer. It’s the trust that underlies it—that’s the essence of prayer. Lord, help me to have greater trust in you.

One of the tools that the devil uses to keep us from trusting in God is fear. He plays on our human frailties and weaknesses. That’s why Our Lord says to the apostles, “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” (Matt. 8:26).

Sometimes we can have a fear of losing material things, or a fear of what people will think or say, or a fear of death or loneliness, when really the only fear we need to have, is the fear of not understanding God’s love for us and the fact that He’s beside us all the time, even when we might think He’s absent.

If we don’t understand the fact that He’s beside us, we will not understand what He’s capable of and what He’s willing to do for us.

Fear can grip our life, can paralyze our soul, can bring about a misery that stops us from trusting in God. That is why on so many occasions, Our Lord challenges the faith and the trust of the apostles to lead them along deeper pathways of a deeper faith.

“And now, thus says Yahweh who created you, Jacob, who formed you, Israel: Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name, you are mine. Should you pass through the waters, I shall be with you; or through rivers, they will not swallow you up. Should you walk through fire, you will not suffer, and the flame will not burn you. For I am Yahweh, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I have given Egypt for your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you” (Isa. 43:1-3).

St. Josemaría in The Way of the Cross invites us “to drop anchor” in our divine filiation (cf. St Josemaría Escrivá, The Way of the Cross, Seventh Station).

Drop anchor in that awareness that, “apart from him, we can do nothing” (cf. John 15:5). We totally depend on Him.

If we become discouraged in certain moments—a tool of the devil, discouragement—it may be because we have too human an outlook. We’re not relying enough on God. We’re not giving Him room to maneuver. It’s a sign of lack of rectitude of intention.

Perhaps Our Lord wants us to pray more, pray over a longer period of time, when we think or feel that we’ve already prayed enough, or we’re tired of praying. That’s when He wants us to “launch out into the deep” (Luke 5:4).

We’re told in The Way of the Cross, “You are discouraged, why? Is it your sins and miseries? Is it your defeats, at times coming one after the other? A really big fall, which you didn’t expect? Be simple. Open your heart. Look: as yet nothing has been lost. You can still go forward, and with more love, with more affection, with more strength.

“Take refuge in your divine sonship: God is your most loving Father. In this lies your security, a haven where you can drop anchor no matter what is happening on the surface of the sea of life. And you will find joy, strength, optimism: victory!” (J. Escrivá, The Way of the Cross, Seventh Station).

God can use even our faults and our failures to make a “pearl of great price” (Matt. 13:45-46). He can lead us in those moments to make great spiritual strides, to learn how to think with faith, to act with faith, to plan with faith, to work with faith, and to pray with faith because we have this omnipotent Father, a loving, affectionate Father who’s looking out for us 24/7.

We can have great faith in our Christian vocation, in our apostolate, in our marriage, in our family. This is where God has placed me, amid the storms and the ups and downs of daily life, when possibly, it may seem that everything is going wrong. But that may not be the reality. It may just be the human, simple, short-sighted vision that we have.

We’re told in the Book of Hebrews, “Without faith it is impossible to please God. But whoever would approach him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him” (Heb. 11:6).

And so, that faith and that trust is a grace, a grace that we need to ask of Our Father God so that we can have a greater peace—a peace because we rely on His omnipotence.

The act of faith of its very nature is a free act. We’re told, “God calls men to serve him in spirit and in truth. Consequently, they are bound to him in conscience, but not coerced. … This fact received its fullest manifestation in Christ Jesus.

“Christ invited people to faith and conversion, but never coerced them. ‘For he bore witness to the truth (cf. John 18:37) but he refused to use force to impose it on those who spoke against it. His kingdom…grows by the love with which Christ, lifted up on the cross, draws all men to himself (cf. John 12:32)’” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, Point 160 quoting Paul VI, Declaration, Dignitatis Humanae, Points 10 and 11, December 7, 1965).

We have to try and respond to the will of God in each moment of the day. That’s why a very useful custom and habit to foster is living in the presence of God, in the presence of Our Lady, in the presence of the Holy Spirit, in the presence of God the Father. We’re always in the company of the Blessed Trinity, who have a will for us in each moment of our day.

With that faith and trust, we know that the task ahead of us is never as great as the power behind us. “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

“The waters will pass through the mountains” (Ps. 104:10 as quoted in J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 283).

John Paul II, in a document at the approach of the third millennium, precisely called by that title, says the Catholic religion is “a religion of remaining in God” (John Paul II, Apostolic Letter, Tertio Millennio Adveniente, Point 8, November 10, 1994).

We remain in Him. “I am in you and you in me” (cf. John 14:20).

“Through Him, with Him and in Him” (Roman Missal, Eucharistic Prayer II, Doxology).

Our purpose in life is to live out that “remaining,” so that we’re never separated from Him, so that when it’s dark, we can see the stars. The eyes of faith: we look up and we see marvelous things.

These are important things to remember in difficult moments and challenges in our professional work—when, maybe, our career path takes a left turn, or this project or this plan doesn’t work out. Or we find we didn’t get the promotion, or everything is falling apart.

Those very demands, tensions, stresses, anxieties, discouragements—behind all those things there could be a divine call. When what people call human tragedies occur, with the eyes of faith, we can see that God is at work here.

There’s some great spiritual message in the successes and failures. God is behind all these things.

And so, Lord, we ask you for a more daring faith. Help us to have more faith in the future, to realize that tough times don’t last, but tough people do. He wants each one of us to have that interior toughness.

The apostles didn’t understand the words that Jesus said to them, particularly when He said, “Cast the net to the other side of the boat.”

“Simon replied, ‘Master, we’ve toiled all night and caught nothing, but at your word, I will lower the nets’” (Luke 5:5).

So that sort of response with supernatural outlook, with faith, with trust, can be a source of great joy. Leading a life of faith, that we know that Our Father God is there.

Our Lady did not understand the word that was said to her, but she acted with faith in His word. “Behold the handmaid of the Lord” (Luke 1:38).

We’re called to walk along the journey of our Christian vocation, which the Holy Father has called a pilgrimage of faith, called to lead a life of faith.

The devil doesn’t want us to see into the future. He doesn’t want us to trust the future. He wants us to worry about it. But we know that Our Father God is there.

“We lack faith,” we’re told in The Forge. “The day we practice this virtue, trusting in God and in his Mother, we will be [courageous] and loyal. God, who is the same God as ever, will work miracles through our hands. —Grant me, dear Jesus, the faith I truly desire! My Mother, sweet Lady, Mary most holy, make me believe!” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 235).

We’re told in Scripture that “The hand of God is not weakened” (cf. Isa. 59:1). God is still working miracles.

He wants us to have a more infectious faith, more trust in that great power that He has. That faith demands a personal encounter with Jesus, like the woman who touched His garments, the fringe of His cloak (Matt. 9:20-22). We have to reach out and touch Him.

We have to judge the evil which God permits not by its immediate effect, but by its ultimate effects. When we watch a movie and the good person gets shot in the early moments of the movie, we give the director or the author credit for the plot. There must be something else to this movie.

We need to always also give God credit for the plot. He’s working something out in a deeper way.

As we’re children of God, we’re also children of Mary. The mystery of Mary helps us to see that in order to approach God, we must become little. “Unless you become like little children again, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3).

Mary, may you obtain for us that total abandonment that we need and that we want, to trust completely in this great omnipotent power of God, with the greater assurance each day that, “Apart from him, we can do nothing” (cf. John 15:5).

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

CPG