Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15:5

Consider the little branch that falls off the vine, it can no longer live. It will no longer produce any fruit.  Let’s now consider our lives and ask ourselves are we living this close to Jesus or have we detached from Him? Do we remain close to Jesus in every experience asking Him for His wisdom and guidance?…or Do we only call upon God when trouble comes our way?

Now that I know that I belong to Jesus, I feel Jesus is always with me. I consult with Him on everything and I know that through joys and sorrows, He’s there for me and with me. This sense of His presence has even changed how I think. And when I reflect on the times in my life when I sinned and offended God, I realize it was because I had not yet fallen in love with Jesus. I got lost in the temptations of the world. I was a disconnected branch. I was not yet embracing my Bridegroom, Christ Jesus.

The following excerpt is
From the Book: The 12 Steps to Holiness and Salvation, from the Works of St. Alphonsus Liguori

“Men fall into sin because they lose sight of the presence of God. ‘The cause of all evil,’ says St. Teresa, ‘lies in the fact that we do not think of the presence of God, but imagine Him far away from us.’ A man who loses sight of the presence of God will easily become prey to sinful and sensual desires and have no strength to resist them. On the other hand, by the thought of God’s ever vigilant eye upon them, the Saints have had strength to resist and overcome all the attacks of the evil one. It was this thought that gave the chaste Susanna courage to spurn the wicked advances of the men who tried to seduce her and even threatened her with death. ‘It is better for me,” she said, ‘to fall into your hands without doing evil, than to sin in the sight of the Lord’” Daniel 13:23