Friendship with Jesus
I returned on Thursday from a couple of days away with some other priests for a time of prayer and reflection in a convent in Gloucestershire. I really appreciated the opportunity to step aside from the normal routine of parish life.
A priest gave us four talks (or reflections) which he based on his own spiritual journey, from the age of 15 until his retirement last year. He chronicled the many ways he grew in faith, and in experience of God’s love and friendship for him. It so happened that I had just read Pope Leo’s catechesis that he gives at his regular Wednesday audience. He has just started a new series, reflecting on the principle documents of the Second Vatican Council. This week he talked about the Constitution Dei Verbum (‘The Word of God’).
He reminded us that God makes us sons and daughters and calls us to become like Him, albeit in our fragile humanity. Our resemblance to God, then, is not reached through transgression and sin, as the serpent suggests to Eve (cf. Gen 3:5), but in our relationship with the Son made man. Pope Leo said that the words of the Lord Jesus we have recalled – ‘I have called you friends’ – are reprised in the Constitution Dei Verbum where it affirms as follows:
‘Through this revelation, therefore, the invisible God out of the abundance of His love speaks to men as friends; “You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” Jesus came among us so that He may invite and take us into fellowship with Himself.’
What Pope Leo reminded us is that it is essential for each of us to make the friendship Jesus asks of us our one priority. He says:
‘Our experience tells us that friendships can come to an end through a dramatic gesture of rupture, or because of a series of daily acts of neglect that erode the relationship until it is lost. If Jesus calls us to be friends, let us not leave this call unheeded. Let us welcome it, let us take care of this relationship and we will discover that friendship with God is our salvation.’
This week, I was able to reflect on the most important thing for me: my friendship with Jesus. Have there been ways I neglected it by not spending time with Jesus and not listening to him? Have I allowed the worries, anxieties and demands of everyday life to desensitise me to Jesus’ desire to have a deep friendship with me? I must remember the importance and priority it has to take in my life.
