Jesus Week - Day 6 - The Now Word

For the sake of my brothers and friends I say,
“Peace be with you.”
(Psalms 122:8)

Jesus, Friend

The religious history of mankind is filled with gods who are as far from humans as ants are from us. And that’s what makes Jesus and the Christian message so extraordinary. The God-man comes not with lightning bolts and fear but love and friendship. Yes, He calls us friends:

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John 15:13-14)

And then He did it. In liberating us from sin, Jesus restores the primordial friendship that God willed from the beginning of time with us His creatures.

I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. (John 15:15)

We are just creatures — from dust to dust we come and go, like wildflowers in the field. Why is Jesus so invested in us? Because He’s God, and God is love. It is His very nature to give because authentic love, agape love, is total giving of self. And Jesus wants to give Himself as a true friend; He wants to overwhelm us with love, which is why St. Paul exclaimed:

What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him, this God has revealed to us through the Spirit. (1 Corinthians 2:9)

Yes, another gift of Our Lord Jesus is the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Holy Trinity. “The love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit”^[1]Romans 5:5 who has revealed to us the full meaning of Jesus’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection: to restore friendship between the creature and the Creator. This passage in Sirach ultimately describes Jesus:

Faithful friends are a sturdy shelter; whoever finds one finds a treasure. Faithful friends are beyond price, no amount can balance their worth. Faithful friends are life-saving medicine… (Sirach 6:14-16)

Jesus wants to be your shelter, your rock; He is your treasure, the “pearl of great price”; His Blood, shed for you, is your life-saving medicine against the poisonous effects of sin. It’s for no other reason than Jesus is profoundly in love with you, whom he even calls “brother” or “sister.” Even more than that, of His followers, He said:

Father, they are your gift to me. (John 17:24)

You are a gift to Jesus — a gift when you become His friend. And friendship is a two-way street. Thus, Jesus said:

You are my friends if you do what I command you… This I command you: love one another…. Whoever does the will of My heavenly Father is My brother, and sister, and mother. (John 15:14, 17; Matthew 12:50)

This is the essence of the Gospel: Jesus wants to reestablish harmony between all of creation, which St. Paul says is “groaning” — awaiting the revelation of the sons and daughters of God. The world is waiting to find God’s friends, those who let Him love them, and love others in return. We call them Saints. This is the heart of the Divine Will and Christianity as opposed to a mere list of Do’s and Don’ts. As Benedict XVI said:

So often the Church’s counter-cultural witness is misunderstood as something backward and negative in today’s society. That is why it is important to emphasize the Good News, the life-giving and life-enhancing message of the Gospel. Even though it is necessary to speak out strongly against the evils that threaten us, we must correct the idea that Catholicism is merely “a collection of prohibitions”. —Address to Irish Bishops; VATICAN CITY, October 29, 2006

Of course, if I murder someone with my words or a weapon, I am hardly loving my neighbor; so God gives us guidelines or commandments that teach us what is love, and what is not. “I am the truth,” He said. The “truth” reveals to us the “way of love” that leads to life, “abundant life” in all that we are and do.

Second, Jesus knows that we are weak and prone to fall, and thus need His grace, which poured forth as the lance pierced His Sacred Heart. And so He said:

I am the Vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in Me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without Me you can do nothing. (John 15:5)

A Personal Relationship

A vine and a branch are essentially one, inseparable — or they should be or the fruit will die. In these words then, Jesus is expressing His desire for a personal relationship with each one of us. Sad to say, too many Catholics have been raised with that religious notion of “God-out-there” or “God-in-that-Church” rather than God in and with me.

Sometimes even Catholics have lost or never had the chance to experience Christ personally: not Christ as a mere ‘paradigm’ or ‘value’, but as the living Lord, ‘the way, and the truth, and the life’. —POPE JOHN PAUL II, L’Osservatore Romano (English Edition of the Vatican Newspaper), March 24, 1993, p.3.

Catholics might think the idea of a “personal relationship with Jesus” is a Protestant concept, something the great evangelist Billy Graham invented. Not so, not at all. The Church, though gifted with a wealth of teachings, councils, catechisms, canons, and papal documents, says simply:

“Great is the mystery of the faith!” The Church professes this mystery in the Apostles’ Creed and celebrates it in the sacramental liturgy, so that the life of the faithful may be conformed to Christ in the Holy Spirit to the glory of God the Father. This mystery, then, requires that the faithful believe in it, that they celebrate it, and that they live from it in a vital and personal relationship with the living and true God. —Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), 2558

Like any personal relationship, it requires that you spend time together with God, speaking to Him from the heart and listening to His Heart. This is called prayer.

Man, himself created in the “image of God” [is] called to a personal relationship with God… prayer is the living relationship of the children of God with their Father who is good beyond measure, with his Son Jesus Christ and with the Holy Spirit. —Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 299, 2565

Jesus is inviting you today to a personal relationship with Him, with the Trinity. If you’ve never said yes, then maybe it’s time to close the gap between you and God… and you won’t be disappointed.

Go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you. (Matthew 6:6)

You see how God wants alone time with you, the most intimate friendship possible?

As we gaze up at the Cross, we see two things. One is the depth and cost humanity suffered from forfeiting friendship with God; the other is what Jesus suffered in order to restore that friendship. We each have to make a personal choice to choose that friendship, to invest in it, in order to possess that which the Risen Jesus offers His friends in His first words after the Resurrection:

Peace be with you. (Luke 24:36)

In other words, I am your Friend.

Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1	Romans 5:5

Jesus Week – Day 6

Jesus, Friend

A Personal Relationship

Related Reading

Footnotes

Footnotes