Divine Friendship
#12thandMass
March 21, 2023
 
This coming Sunday’s gospel (John 11:1-45) is the moving story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead, in which Jesus reveals Himself as “the Resurrection and the Life”, as the One by Whom, as St. Thomas Aquinas says in “Commentary on the gospel of Saint John” (chapter 11), at the last, “everyone will rise in their souls and in their bodies”. 
 
In the same Commentary, in considering the sisters’ initial message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill”, St. Thomas underscores two things about friendship with God:
 

1. His sisters do not say, “Lord, come and heal him,” but simply to mention his sickness, he is ill. This indicates that it is enough merely to state one's need to a friend, without adding a request. For a friend, since he wills the good of his friend as his own good, is just as interested in warding off harm from his friends as he is in warding it off from himself. And this is especially true of the one who most truly loves: “The Lord preserves all who love him” (Psalm 145:20).
2. These two sisters, who wanted the cure of their sick brother, did not come in person to Christ, as did the paralytic (Luke 5:18), and the centurion (Matthew 8:5). This was because of the confidence they had in Christ due to the special love and friendship which he had shown for them; or, perhaps it was their grief that kept them away: “A friend, if he is steadfast, will be to you as yourself” (Sirach 6:11).

 
We are invited to be friends with Christ (in the deepest not the Facebook sense!). Christ knows what we need and in Him we can have complete confidence.  He the friend par excellence, Whose love knows no bounds and Whose faithfulness is perfect.  Lent is about divine friendship.
 
In Him,
 
Dominique+
divine friend
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