“There is nothing on this earth more prized than true friendship.” That is a quote from the great Catholic theologian from the 13th century, St Thomas Aquinas. Our first reading today from the book of Sirach is about friendship. Sirach, written in Alexandria, Egypt by a Jewish scribe about two centuries before Christ’s birth in the tradition of Jewish wisdom literature, gives us a lot of wise advice. Sirach tells us that while we will have a lot of acquaintances in our lives, a true friend or a true confidant will be one in a thousand. Father James Martin has said, in order for us to be a true friend of Jesus, in order to be his true disciple, we cannot put Jesus in a box. We need to understand him as truly human and truly divine, as our God who inviting us into a friendship and a relationship with him. I look out at our Happy Hearts group today gathered for mass, and I see so many friendships and relationships on so many different levels. Indeed, Church is more than just coming to mass. Making friendships and relationships and being a true part of the community is a part of our calling. If you claim to be Catholic and ignore the community and friendship aspect of our faith, then I think you are missing a big part of what it means to be Catholic. I think we use the word “friend” so often in our modern secular world, that the true sense of friendship has lost its meaning. Yes, to have a friend, we need to be a friend, to reach out to others. Like the world love that has so many different worldly connotations when compared to love in the context of our faith, the sense of friendship has an entirely different meaning from a faith perspective. Indeed, true friendship is based on genuine love. As we come to mass today to celebrate around the Lord’s table as a community, as we come to have Jesus bring healing to our lives, let us thank God for the true friends we have in our lives, those friends who are there for us no matter what.
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