Arulvakku

15.10.2021 — Becoming His Friends

28th Week in Ord. Time, Friday – 15th October 2021 — Gospel:       Lk 12,1-7

Becoming His Friends

The crowd surrounding Jesus kept getting bigger and bigger. Luke expresses Jesus’ closeness to them by showing, “I tell you, my friends”. Jesus didn’t become intoxicated by the growing human popularity. He wasn’t trying to feed his own ego by multiplying followers. He was interested in trying to win true friends. In fact, as he instructed his listeners to care less about what happens to them during their life than what will happen beyond death, he called them my friends. Jesus wants our friendship. Indeed, grace is a gift that elevates our limited human nature so that we can relate to God no longer simply as his creatures, but as his friends. His friends are those whom He dearly loved and had taken into the greatest intimacy and familiarity. He was making known to them whatever He had heard from His Father. He was giving them the best instructions, the most faithful and friendly advice, and proper precautions, “be not afraid of those who will kill the body and after that they have no more that they can do.” Finally, Jesus showed his followers how to be friends, by laying down his life for them. It was the discovery of Christ as a true friend, and a true companion, that inspired the great saint like Teresa of Avila.