{"id":2737,"date":"2020-05-13T08:58:33","date_gmt":"2020-05-13T07:58:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stthomasneilston.co.uk\/?p=2737"},"modified":"2020-05-13T08:58:33","modified_gmt":"2020-05-13T07:58:33","slug":"st-john-151-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/?p=2737","title":{"rendered":"St John 15:1-8"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>St John 15:1-8<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jesus uses the image of the vinedresser to describe his Father and the vine to describe himself and the branch, ourselves. The Father is expectant of a fruitful apostolate from us, just \u00a0as the owner of the vineyard expects a productive wine harvest.\u00a0 Without the life-giving sap which flows through the branches from the vine there will be no abundant harvest and so with us, we need the living life of Jesus to be fruitful Christians.<\/p>\n<p>We are not called to be barren, dry or withered Christians. We are called to radically live out the invigorating life of Jesus, that flows out from him to us. When we allow Jesus to prune our lives, to \u00a0cleanse and purify them, then just as the branch remains part of the vine, God lives in us and we in God.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cOur hearts were made for You, O Lord, and they are restless until they rest in You.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>St. Augustine of Hippo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>St John 15:1-8 Jesus uses the image of the vinedresser to describe his Father and the vine to describe himself and the branch, ourselves. The Father is expectant of a fruitful apostolate from us, just \u00a0as the owner of the vineyard expects a productive wine harvest.\u00a0 Without the life-giving sap which flows through the branches &#8230; <span class=\"more\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/?p=2737\">[Read more&#8230;]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","post","publish","author-ryan-black","post-2737","format-standard","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p85OtW-I9","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2737"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2738,"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2737\/revisions\/2738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}