The Friendship of Jesus

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“At daybreak he appeared in the temple again, and as all the people came to him, he sat down and began to teach them” (John 8:2).

There are many occasions in the Gospel where we see Our Lord gives a lot of importance to friendship, something the Father (Msgr. Fernando Ocáriz) has been speaking to us a lot in the last few years and months.

Jesus Christ, perfect man, lived out fully the human value of friendship. We see how, from a young age, He formed friendships with the people around Him.

When He was twelve, and they were coming back from Jerusalem, Our Lady and St. Joseph assumed that He was traveling with a group of friends and relatives (cf. Luke 2:44). It was sort of the normal, natural, assumed thing. It was only after a day's journey that they went to look for Him, their relations and acquaintances.

Later in His public life, we see Our Lord often in the homes of His friends and acquaintances, whether visiting them or sharing a meal.

“Leaving the synagogue he went to Simon's house. Now Simon's mother-in-law was in the grip of a high fever and they asked him to do something for her” (Luke 4:38).

It was very natural or normal for Our Lord to be in these situations. He found Himself at home with these social relationships.

“In his honor Levi held a great reception in his house, and with them at table was a large gathering of tax collectors and sinners” (Luke 5:29).

If we were to be thinking of organizing a party, and we were going to invite the sinners that we know, you might wonder: who will I place on that list? We might have trouble knowing greater sinners than ourselves.

Matthew must have had a lot of very colorful friends. But Our Lord felt completely at home with that group of people, which could have been a strange group of people. He didn't feel out of place or uncomfortable.

“One of the Pharisees invited him to a meal. When he arrived at the Pharisee's house, he took his place at table” (Luke 7:36).

Our Lord was well brought up in the ways of social interaction. He knew what to do, how to behave, how to function at this sort of do's.

“And suddenly there came a man named Jairus, who was president of the synagogue. He fell at Jesus’ feet and pleaded with him to come to his house…” (Luke 8:41).

Our Lord was also exposed to all sorts of invitations. “When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and spoke to him, ‘Zacchaeus, come down, hurry, because I must stay at your house today’” (Luke 19:5).

And we also see Him at the wedding feast of Cana. “On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.” Jesus and His disciples were also present (John 2:1-2).

There were also times when Our Lord devoted time exclusively to be with the disciples. “Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the lakeside, and great crowds from Galilee followed him. From Judea…” (Mark 3:7).

But at other times Our Lord stopped and spent time with people, at chance meetings and occasions. A few minutes of conversation were enough to bring about great changes in people.

A few minutes of conversation were enough for the Samaritan woman to sense that she was known and understood. That led her to ask the question, “Can this be the Christ?” (John 4:7-29).

Our Lord takes advantage of any situation to begin a relationship of friendship. We often see Him stopping and spending time with specific people.

There's an anecdote in The Man of Villa Tevere when they're traveling somewhere and our Father asks Don Javier to buy some watermelons or tea or something.

They stop at a small stall, and they buy some things, and when Don Javier comes back to the car, our Father asked him if he talked to the seller about spiritual things. Don Javier hadn’t. He just bought the watermelon.

Our Father sort of encourages him, that it might be the only time in his life that that man has a conversation with a priest about Christ. He should have used the opportunity a little bit better (Pilar Urbano, The Man of Villa Tevere, Chapter 17).

The anecdote is about that very small opportunity that arose in that occasion. And our Father encouraged them to take full advantage, not to squander opportunities.

The disciples from Emmaus, after walking alongside and sitting at a table with Our Lord, they recognized the presence of the Friend who made their hearts burn. “Did not our hearts burn within us as he talked to us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:28-32).

It should be a good thing if our friends realize there's something different about our friendship.

Somebody told me once how they were chatting with their friend and they began to talk about all the normal ordinary things, and the friend said to them, “Look, I can talk about those things with anybody. With you, we talk about the deeper things.”

That's why, every so often, make sure that we talk about those deeper things. We bring up topics that may be difficult to talk about and may cost us a little bit.

In a get-together with Don Álvaro (Blessed Álvaro del Portillo) many years ago in Dublin, somebody stood up and said, “I'm in the army and I do skydiving in the Cavalry, and there's a moment when I have to jump out of the plane at 30,000 feet.

“When I'm at the door of the plane, launching myself out into mid-air at 30,000 feet, often it doesn't cost me a thought. But sometimes when I'm having coffee with a friend, when the moment comes to launch myself into their soul, sometimes I hold back a little bit.

“How can I have the same daring when I'm having coffee with my friend as I have at 30,000 feet?” I don't know what the answer was from Don Álvaro, but it was a very interesting question.

It talks a little bit about those moments in our friendship when we have to go deeper, because Our Lord wants us to have deep personal relationships with people, not just superficial acquaintances.

There were times when Our Lord dedicated longer periods of time to His friends. We see this in the home at Bethany. He spent long days in family intimacy.

Our Father says, “Jesus shares words of affection and encouragement, and responds to friendship with his own friendship. What marvelous conversations in the home at Bethany, with Lazarus, Martha, and Mary!” (Josemaría Escrivá, Letter, October 24, 1965).

Being able to grow in a friendship, or start a friendship, or keep friendship going is a virtue. And like virtues, it can always be growing. At each stage in our life, we reach a new level of friendship, a new level of practicing that virtue whereby we keep our friendship alive with people.

Somebody who was living in a residence in Europe many years ago managed to do a lot of apostolate with a lot of people staying in that residence, and many of them were from Asia.

Often, they went back to occupy important places in the countries they came from. And over a 30- or 40-year period, that person kept up with them.

In that region when they needed a lot of financial help to rebuild a lot of the centers, he was able to draw on those contacts. It was very fruitful.

They asked that person, “How did you manage all of this over a 30, 40, 50-year period?”

And he said, “Just three words: keep the contact warm. Keep the contact warm.”

The aristocrats of friendship know how to go about things. They know the tips, the details, the expertise.

Part of our relationship or friendship with people is precisely to keep the contact warm. There might be a student that goes to the university and ends up in the Cayman Islands, or somebody else who goes to Fiji.

But because that person has been a friend of ours, he gets at least an email every year, a Christmas greeting. We keep abreast of the change of their phone, of their email, what's happening in their family, or the names of their children.

With this we show the authenticity of our friendship, that we're serious. We're on a divine plane. We're following in the footsteps of the Master.

In that home at Bethany, we also learn that Our Lord’s friendship produces a deep trust. We find with the passage of time that people come to us with their problems, their difficulties, their challenges in life. And that's a very good sign.

It might be a bit of a burden. It might be time consuming. But it's a very good sign that people see something different in our relationship. There's a deep trust there.

We can ask Our Lord that we might never be afraid to spend too much time with friends, or in conversations. Or to put other things aside, because we know that conversation is very important. We see it. Other people see it.

I was rather impressed one time talking to a supernumerary in Dublin in the referendum in 1983. I knew the supernumerary had a lot of tentacles in various places, and didn't really know the full extent of it, but this person was a real mover.

I needed to get a venue whereby the medical profession (the doctors for the amendment to place a pro-life amendment into the constitution), would have a base. I needed a flat or a house or a room somewhere.

I talked to this particular supernumerary. Within 24 hours he found the most fantastic building, fully carpeted, fully furnished, that was vacant.

I said, “But how did you manage to get that in 24 hours?” He said, “I knew from what you were telling me that this was very important.”

I was rather impressed with those words. This person could detect that this thing was important. They put aside all the other things they were doing to give time to that particular project, and true enough this yields a huge fortune.

Friends realize that certain things are important. We stop other things, we change our plans, we make ourselves available for people. This is a very important factor to translating our chats with supernumeraries and cooperators.

Our Father says, “Parents have to be very good friends of their children” (J. Escrivá, Christ Is Passing By, Point 27). In my experience that's a very easy thing to say, but not such an easy thing to achieve.

We have to remind supernumeraries and cooperators about that. That means at times that they have to stop what they are doing, and sit down and talk to their children, or listen to them, or make time for them. Or talk to them about those important areas, like the meaning of human love and human sexuality, truth, beauty, and meaning, that they may find difficult to talk about, but which are very important to get out of that deeper relationship, with a ten-year-old, eleven-year-old, or twelve-year-old child.

“They asked Jesus, ‘Are you Elijah?’ He replied, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’

They ask Him deep questions. They are not afraid to ask Him questions. “Who are you?” (John 1:21-22).

Our Lord knows how to accompany people in their suffering. Empathy: “Jesus wept” (John 11:35).

If certain people are our friends, we have to be there for them. We have to be there for them in the moments of their Calvary, so that they can rely on us.

Often it's not our words, but what we do. It’s just our presence that can say everything: I am here for you, and I will always be here for you. You can rely on me.

But it's at the Last Supper that Our Lord shows most deeply His desire to offer His friendship. In the intimacy of the Cenacle, Our Lord says to the apostles, ‘I have longed to eat this Passover with you before I suffer’” (Luke 22:15).

“No longer do I call you servants…, but I have called you friends’” (John 15:15).

One spiritual writer says that is among the most important phrases that Our Lord says in the Gospel. It defines our relationship with Him, and it also defines what we have to be for others. He said this to all of us.

“God loves us not merely as creatures but as children to whom He offers true friendship. And we respond to that friendship by uniting our will to His, by doing what Our Lord wants” (Fernando Ocáriz, Letter from the Prelate on Friendship, November 1, 2019).

Listening to the Father and taking deeply the words of friendship that he has taken great trouble to transmit to us in the last few years, we have to try to bring this topic to our prayer more frequently, to ask the Holy Spirit for lights, to look again at our lists of friends and contacts.

Make plans for the coming year to see how, possibly, in the more difficult times that we might be living in for various reasons and circumstances, there are also greater graces, to connect at a deeper level with people.

The whole COVID experience can help us to remind people of the fleeting nature of this life, of how they need to take care of their soul, so that we seize the graces that are available during this period to fulfill the will of God for us in relation to other people.

“Remain in me, as I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit all by itself, unless it remains part of the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me” (John 15:4).

Our Lord invites us to “remain” in Him “in a communion of thought and sentiment, and thus our will and God’s will increasingly coincide. God's will for us is no longer an alien will, something imposed from without by the commandments, but it is now my own will, based on the realization that God is in fact more deeply present to me than I am to myself. Self-abandonment to God increases and God becomes our joy” (Benedict XVI, Encyclical, Deus caritas est, December 25, 2005, Point 17).

The words of the angels—"good tidings of great joy that shall be to all the people” (Luke 2:10)—come to mean more for us. God wants me to be concerned with all the people, to expend myself and to go one by one.

When Don Álvaro went to Korea in 1987, there were a few cooperators there. One of them asked him: “How many members are there in Opus Dei?” And Don Álvaro very happily said, “Seventy-five thousand.” The cooperator said, “Only? Oh, the day that Opus Dei starts in Korea, there'll be seventy-five thousand in Korea.”

Don Álvaro said, “Very good, wonderful. But remember, one by one.”

The person did not quite fully grasp what sort of an organization Opus Dei was. He thought it was some sort of a thing that you put your name down on the list scroll after St. Vincent de Paul or the Legion of Mary or something else.

But Don Álvaro was communicating the way that we do things: one by one. We're still waiting for the seventy-five thousand in Korea. But maybe someday it will happen.

Our Lord fills us with confidence because we realize that we have a true friendship with Him, because He is faithful. Faithful friendship is very important.

I had a student once in another country who ended up in jail. I asked a teacher in Stockholm School once: “Are any of your past students in jail?” He said, “No, but some of them should be.”

You might have a student some time who ends up in jail. Try and make sure that you visit them in jail. It's an experience that we don't get to go through, happily, too frequently. But in those sorts of circumstances, we have to show the fidelity of our friendship. It's not limited to certain circumstances in other people's lives.

“Friendship with Our Lord cannot be broken. He does not leave us, even though at times he might keep silent. When we need him, he makes himself known to us” (Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation, Christus vivit, March 25, 2019, Point 154).

He whispers words in our ear. He helps us to say the things that that other person needs to hear, even though we may not be very aware of what we're saying.

We're told in the Book of Jeremiah, “I shall let you find me, Yahweh declares. I shall restore your fortunes and gather you in from all the nations and wherever I have driven you, Yahweh declares. I shall bring you back to the place from which I exiled you” (Jer. 29:14).

Our Lord remains at our side wherever we go. We're told in the Book of Joshua, “Have I not told you: Be strong and stand firm? Be fearless and undaunted, for go where you may, Yahweh your God is with you” (Jos. 1:9).

And sometimes Our Lord wants us to transmit these words to many people around us. He never breaks His covenant. He simply asks that we do not abandon Him.

“Abide in me and I in you” (John 15:4). The more we grow in our material life, in our friendship with Our Lord, the more we grow in our friendship with other people.

And even if we were to stray from Him, “He remains faithful because he cannot deny himself.” St. Paul says to Timothy, “If we are faithless, he is faithful still for he cannot disown his own self” (2 Tim. 2:13).

We try to respond to this friendship with intimacy. These days are special days of intimacy.

To respond to His friendship is to love Him, with a love that is the soul of the Christian life, which tries to manifest itself in everything we do.

“We need a rich interior life,” said our Father, “the sure sign of friendship with God and the indispensable condition for any work with souls” (J. Escrivá, Letter, May 31, 1943).

All apostolate, all work for the good of souls as we are all so much involved in, stems from this friendship with God, which is the source of true Christian love for others.

We could ask Our Lord for the grace to seize the opportunities as they come. If we are on a St. Gabriel retreat or we are looking after a St. Gabriel recollection, we have to be attentive to every soul that comes in the door.

And to those souls, the supernumeraries, the cooperators, the associates we are dealing with, we know their names, we pray for them, we think about their possibilities, we seek for their possibilities and plans. We are attentive to the new horizons that God may open up to us from time to time. because we discover that this person has that talent, or this other person has that capacity, or this other person has another contact in some other place.

We are opening horizons all the time, like our Father telling Don Javier (Bishop Javier Echevarría) about the seller of the watermelon: seize the opportunity.

“By living in friendship with God, which is the first friendship we have to foster and strengthen, you will be able to make many true friends” (cf. Sir. 6:17).

That doesn't mean that our friends agree with us or agree with everything we do. They might be the furthest people from God that we might ever meet in our life, the furthest people from what was there, but they are our friends.

We keep in contact with them because it's our job to get them to heaven, by hook or by crook. We don't know at what stage in their life God may give them the grace of the conversion. Or on their deathbed, they might ask to see a priest, or a whole pile of other things.

The Book of Sirach says, “Whoever fears the Lord makes true friends, for as a person is, so his friend is true” (cf. Sir. 6:17).

“The effort Our Lord has made,” said our Father, “and continues making to keep us in his friendship is the same effort that he wants to make for many other souls, making use of us as instruments to do so” (J. Escrivá, Letter, March 11, 1940).

That last person on our list from primary school or secondary school, and maybe the person in the class that we had least dealings with, or we had to fight with, or all sorts of other things, puts a new perspective on all those relationships of divine origin that God has placed in our life.

Nothing will be by chance. Every single soul that we have come to know is somehow important. We have to look for them, we have to find them.

In the parable of the wedding feast, Our Lord says, “Go into the highways and the byways” (Matt. 22:9).

There may be many highways and byways in your life. Every contact that we make, every call, in time, there may come a time in our life when we will have more time to follow up with these people. But at least we have a name, a number, an email, a contact.

In one of his letters, our Father said, “We are called to serve the crowds. We are never closed in on ourselves, but live facing the multitude of men and women” (J. Escrivá, Letter, May 31, 1954).

I would like to say, each one of us has to have ten souls hanging from every finger, to open up like a fan.

“And deep in our hearts are those words of Our Lord Jesus Christ: ‘I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat’” (Mark 8:2; J. Escrivá, ibid.).

Like Our Lord, we also have “compassion on the multitudes”—the multitudes who don't have the beauty of the truth and the knowledge of human love that we have, a reflection of divine love. Our desire to share that truth, which is a consequence of love and friendship, needs us to be always on the move, to be looking for new souls and new opportunities.

Our Father says in the Furrow, “True friendship also means making a heartfelt effort to understand the convictions of our friends, even though we may never come to share them or accept them” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 746).

Loving others means seeing and affirming them just as they are.

We can thank God also that we are surrounded by our best friends. Our sisters are our best friends. That's what family is: friends that God has chosen for us.

Loving others means seeing and affirming them just as they are. From the first proselytism comes the other proselytism. And before that other proselytism there has to come the first proselytism.

We love others just as they are, with their problems, their defects, their personal history, their social surroundings, and their own times for drawing close to Jesus.

To build a true friendship we need to develop the capacity to look at other people with affection to the point where we see them with the eyes of Christ.

With the visits of Don Álvaro, Don Javier, the Father last year, as well as our Father, we see how they all poured out an enormous affection on the people that they met in all sorts of places, constantly pouring out affection, seeing others with the eyes of Christ.

We can ask Our Lady as she looks at the Christ Child in Bethlehem, with Saint Joseph, that she might teach us, as we look at the Christ Child, to be able to look on all the people that we meet precisely with the eyes of Christ.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

MVF