A Friend of God
Blessed? Tested? One in the same?
What word comes to mind when you think of your relationship with God? Many would probably say son or daughter referring to themself or Father if referring to God. This is the foundation of the famous prayer that Jesus gave us in his ministry here on Earth. The Our Father prayer beautifully highlights the title we associate with the first person of the Blessed Trinity more commonly known as The Father.
In connection with that first relationship, we could refer to ourselves as brother or sister of God because through the Incarnation of the second person of the Blessed Trinity, Jesus Christ, we have the opportunity to become adopted sons and daughters of the Father and therefore brother or sister to Our Lord who is the only Son of God by nature.
Some less common titles we might see are dwelling place which is our relationship with the Holy Spirit. If you are the Blessed Virgin, which if you are reading this in time with your earthly eyeballs you are not, you can take sole possession of the title spouse as it relates to the third person of the Blessed Trinity. Titles like servant or slave may also be found in scripture showing our place at the service of the Godhead, but I don’t think this is the dynamic that God would highlight as the most important.
This leaves one significant descriptor absent from our list that Jesus emphasizes towards the end of His earthly ministry and that is the title of friend. Jesus bestows this title on the apostles in the upper room during the Last Supper. He says that the reason He is no longer calling them servants but rather friends is because He has shared all that He knows from the Father. Because Jesus has brought the apostles up to speed on The Big Guy’s plan, they can now be considered friends with Jesus. This sounds like a rather awesome upgrade and definitely a valuable guy to have in your rolodex for the casual namedrop if you are ever in a pinch, right?
Well, not so fast. You see, immediately after Jesus gets his apostles hyped about the elevation of their relationship with Him, He drops the hammer that they will be hated by the world because the world hated Jesus first. Talk about a throwing some cold water on the new relationship status. The tension we find in being Jesus’s friend is a key paradox in Christianity.
You absolutely want to be God’s friend. The alternative would be really bad. If God were your enemy, things are very unlikely to work out for you, and if you have any doubts, ask nearly any of the enemies of the Hebrew people in the Old Testament how that worked out for them. However, being God’s friend does not mean that life is going to be a walk in the park. We see countless examples of struggle from biblical characters that seem to be or are explicitly in God’s favor. Poor Job stands out as possibly the most obvious example. If we include Church Tradition alongside the Bible, the apostles might give our Old Testament friend a run for his money seeing as how all but one, John, are said to have died a martyr’s death. (Fun and not-so-fun fact. St. Bartholomew is said to have been flayed alive and is often depicted in sacred art as carrying his own skin for which I give the award for “Worst Apostle Mode of Death.”) While Jesus’s friend to martyred friend ratio still remains statistically high enough to not assure you of your murderous fate, it shouldn’t be easily dismissed. In fact, Christians and particularly Catholics all around the world today are called to give up their lives for their faith in our God.
As November (the month dedicated to those that have gone before us) comes to an end, we should think of these holy martyrs and ask for their intercession. Not every friend of God is gifted with the crown of martyrdom or at least not a red crown. While monasticism originated with St. Anothony the Great in Egypt, the monastic life began to really flourish following the legalization of Christianity and the end to extreme Roman persecution. The monastic life was viewed as a way of offering up your life without dying as a white martyrdom. In an episode of Pints with Aquinas, Fr. John Burns (go to 2:13:00) spoke about a friend of his that became a Carthusian monk who lives in near complete silence. The extreme life they live is meant to draw themselves so far out of the ordinary world that they can be frontline soldiers in the spiritual battle over our world.
Another monastic, St. Teresa of Ávila is the source of a wonderful quote about being a friend of God. As a woman who was no stranger to hardship in her life, she relied constantly on God as a source of strength in her vocation. Her hagiography records a journey back to her convent in the midst of a fierce rainstorm in which she slipped down an embankment falling squarely into the mud. This drove her to look to heaven and admonish God saying, “If this is how You treat Your friends, no wonder why You have so few of them!” This shocking frankness towards the Almighty can catch us by surprise, but the intimacy that St. Teresa had with our Lord enabled her to express herself so boldly. It is with this level of intimacy that every Christian should strive to achieve. In the end, we know God will provide every grace necessary to overcome any possible obstacle. This is the guaranteed promise to any friend of God. So, no matter what the hardships we might face due to this friendship, pray that we are always able to say the words of Job 1:21, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked shall I return; the LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”