How to become a friend

Saturday of the Seventh Week of Easter, Mass in the Morning, May 27, 2023

(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)

How to become a friend

Paul remained for two full years in his lodgings. He received all who came to him, and with complete assurance and without hindrance he proclaimed the Kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ.

Margaret and I both appreciate having a friend we can call or visit whenever we want or need to. I talked to my friend Shannon about my imminent surgery last night. It was difficult for us to connect, we tried several times over the afternoon, but we persevered. Our conversation was not long but it was precious to me. I need someone who will listen to me unload my pain and my fear.

I am grateful too for a few others, who may not be easy to get hold of, but who will always listen. Some of them also pray.

We could work our lives away, and invest too little time in friends, and then wish we had. Work is meant to be joyful, Ron Rolheiser says, but it is not meant to take up all our time.

We have to spend most of our waking lives working. That should tell us something, namely that work must be the major avenue through which God wants us to journey toward the deeper things. Work requires our concentration, and God does not demand our conscious attention all this time.

God is the ground of our being, and of our work, and of our relationships. We know and experience God through these things, not only in conscious thought and prayer. We participate with God in building this world – by growing things, building things, creating things, cleaning things, painting things, writing things, raising children, teaching others, consoling others and struggling with others. In these ways we get to know God, toiling in partnership with him.

I am thankful that so much of my work has let me actively pursue relationships. Margaret too has built deep and lasting bonds with our kids and their families as well as many friends over the years. We find God everywhere in our talk and time with other people, in spite of our deep inadequacies. And we are more grateful for children than for anyone:

It is children who lead us to the truth. We are not worthy to educate even one of them. Our lips are unclean; our dedication is not wholehearted. Our truthfulness is partial; our love divided. Our kindness is not without motives. We ourselves are not yet free of lovelessness, possessiveness, and selfishness. Only sages and saints – only those who stand as children before God – are really fit to live and work with children.

And yet, here we are. And here are our children, all grown up and now rearing their own small images of God. Hermann Hesse reminds us that “with just a little witty skepticism we can kill a good deal of the future in a child or young person.” Our culture is soaked with disrespect and irreverence, but beneath it the children (all of us) cry out for a chance to love and be loved.

These children will learn the art of friendship themselves, partly at least from us, and live their lives well, working, praying, and listening to each other not for their own sake, but for the sake of others.

When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about him?” Jesus said to him, “What if I want him to remain until I come? What concern is it of yours? You follow me.”

(Acts 28, Psalm 11, John 16, John 21)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)

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