Saturday, November 16, 2013

Friendship: Daily Mass Homily--Thursday, November 14th, 2013


            One of the greatest gifts in my life is the gift of friendship.  My close friends have not only supported and inspired me in the path to priesthood, but were catalysts to my initial conversion and simply good for my human life.
            My love of my friends and the Scriptures motivated me in writing my MAT thesis in seminary and I focused on friendship in the Scriptures.  I learned that only two men were called friends of God in the Old Testament: Abraham and Moses.  Both of these men had powerful experiences of God, communicated with Him in a dialogue and were a bridge between God and His people.
            In our first reading we learn that wisdom “passing into holy souls from age to age…produces friends of God.”
            We believe that Wisdom became a man in Jesus Christ.  And Jesus has a thing or two to tell us about friendship: “No longer do I call you slaves, for a slave does not know what his master is doing.  I have called you friends…”  In announcing this reality to the disciples of his time, Jesus calls each of us—as disciples two thousand years later—friends.
            Do you think of God as your friend?  Do you consider yourself a friend of His?  Reflect on this sort of relationship and allow God to be your best friend and you to be His.

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