REFLECTIONS FOR Friday, Fifth Week of Easter

TODAY'S WORD

By


Fr. Aloysius Santiago sdb
Rector and Parish Priest
Don Bosco Shrine
Lingarajapuram, Bangalore

John: 15:15b "but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from My Father."


GOSPEL REFLECTION

We all value friendship. We have a deep need to befriend someone and to be befriended by someone.

When a couple who are married regard one another as their closest friend, the marriage is likely to be happy and to last. 

Friendship is a form of love that everyone can experience, whether married or not. 

The Jewish Scriptures, especially the Wisdom books, have a lot to say about friendship. 

It is regarded there as a gift from God. According to the Book of Sirach, ‘faithful friends are a sturdy shelter: whoever finds one has found a treasure’. 

It is out of this Jewish tradition of the value of friendship that Jesus says to his disciples in today’s gospel reading, ‘I call you friends’. 

Jesus declares there that he expresses his friendship for his disciples, for all of us, in two ways. 

He has befriended us by giving us his life, laying down his life for us. 

He has also befriended us by revealing to us what is deepest and most precious to him, his love and knowledge of God his Father, ‘I have made known to you everything I have learned from my Father’. 

The Lord has befriended each one of us. He has chosen each one of us. ‘You did not choose me, no I chose you’. 

We have been befriended by the Lord, chosen by him, out of love. 

In any human friendship, two people have to keep choosing one another. If only one person chooses the other, but is not chosen in return, the friendship will die. 

That is not the case with the Lord’s friendship of us. He continues to choose us, even when we do not choose him. 

Yet, he wants us to choose him and he waits for us to do so. 

The question the risen Lord addressed to Peter is addressed to us all, ‘Do you love me?’ If we answer ‘yes’ to that question, as Peter did, the Lord will ask us to live out our love of him by loving one another as he has loved us, by befriending one another as he has befriended us.


RESOLUTION

Let's resolve to love the Lord in all situations of our life

Have a prayerful Day

Today is National Day of Prayer

Let's pray for India through our fast