If you shall ask anything in my name, I will do it.
All Commentaries on John 14:14 Go To John 14
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
If ye shall ask anything in My Name, I will do it. What Christ in the last verse said of the Father He here says of Himself, that He may show that He is the same God with the Father, that He hears those who pray to Him, and that He doeth all things which the Father doeth. Whence S. Cyril asserts that Christ is here speaking of His Divinity. Some are of opinion that the same thing is spoken and confirmed which He had said in the verse preceding. Wherefore Chrysostom and Nonnus omit this verse. But it is found in the Arabic, Syriac, S. Augustine, S. Cyril, Theophylact, &c.
But Toletus and others, with better reason, think that something different is meant from the verse preceding. They think that the words of the former verse relate to the petition for the greater things: but that in this verse Christ says that He will hear particular prayers. He means that although He is going away to the Father, and will be absent in the body, yet He is always present and will hear their prayers, and help their necessities, so that whatsoever they ask in His name, i.e, through His merits, He will do for them. S. Augustine supposes an objection. S. Paul asked that the angel of Satan might depart from him, but received it not. But consider that it is said, In My Name, i.e, in Jesus! For whatever we ask contrary to our salvation, we do not ask in the name of the Saviour. For He would not be a Saviour to a Prayer of Manasseh , if He did anything to hinder his salvation. The physician knows what is against his patient"s health, and what is in favour of it: and therefore he does not comply with his wishes in what is against his recovery.
