Friday of the Fifth Week of Easter
I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.
John 15:15
I am always honored when a friend shares something personal with me. Disclosure is an expression of deep trust. They are vulnerable, falling for a few moments as they tell their story, believing we will catch them. What a privilege to be at the receiving end of such authenticity.
This kind of sharing and vulnerability is the source of our friendship with Jesus. We are his friends, not slaves or servants, because he has told us everything he heard from his Father. He decided to share the most intimate part of himself—his love for his Father.
Drawing upon Scripture and the wisdom of the Saints, Pope Francis highlighted Jesus’s love for the Father in his last encyclical Dilexit Nos (He Loved Us):
The fourth Gospel tells us that the eternal Son was always “close to the Father’s heart” (Jn 1:18). Saint Irenaeus thus declares that “the Son of God was with the Father from the beginning.” Origen, for his part, maintains that the Son perseveres “in uninterrupted contemplation of the depths of the Father.” When the Son took flesh he spent entire nights conversing with his beloved Father on the mountaintop (cf. Lk 6:12). He told us, “I must be in my Father’s house” (Lk 2:49). We see, too, how he expressed his praise: “Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth’” (Lk 10:21). His last words, full of trust, were, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Lk 23:46).
Jesus willingly exposed his interior life to his disciples and to all of us who believe in him. He cherished his relationship with the Father more than anything else. What an honor and privilege! Let us bask in this truth today—that Jesus has shared and continues to share with us his unity with the Father, that we are his friends, and that he has entrusted us with his very self.
—Rachael Griggs