What do we do with our friends?   Spend time together, talk with each other, share a meal with each other, be there for each other….my friend Jesus and your friend Jesus wants to do the same with us.  Jesus wants to spend time with us, but we need to make time for him.   No friendship can survive with a few tweets or messages a month or a year.  Jesus wants more.   He wants to have a meal with us…..here at the Eucharist.  This Holy Meal has been set before us by God Himself and the food we share is His Divine Presence.  To be friends with Jesus means we give up as much for others as he gives up for us.  Jesus loves us so much that He gives us everything possible and then says to go and do it to all we meet.  To be Jesus’ friend is to befriend every person in the world as He does.   Jesus excludes no one from His friendship.  We exclude ourselves; we keep Him at a distance; we think we don’t need him.  Yet, whether we want to admit it or not, we do.

The friendship that Jesus calls us to is not a friendship of connivence. He demands from us a commitment.  It is not easy to be a friend of Jesus because he calls us to love as unconditionally as He loves.  We need to love ourselves as Jesus loves us; we need to love others as Jesus loves them, and we need to love Jesus with everything we have.  In Corinthians 13, we are told that without love we are nothing.  Christian love is patient, kind, forgiving, not inflated, and the list continues. 

As we approach the end of the Easter season in two weeks with the Solemnity of Pentecost, let us beg the Spirit of God to grant us all the grace to celebrate being the friends of Jesus.  May the Spirit of the Living God enflame our hearts the love of God that transformed the Cross into the sign of our hope and the symbol of His Love.

 

Come, Divine Spirit of Christ and teach us how to love.

Thank you for calling us your friends.  Teach us to live as your friends.

May we share the Love that you have for us with all we know and meet.

Divine Spirit, light our hearts on the fire of love.

May we have the strength to Love as Jesus loves us

Amen.