In John’s Gospel, after Jesus celebrated the Last Supper with his disciples, he gave some discourses to them. This week we have been hearing passages from these Last Supper discourses from the 14th and 15th chapters of John’s Gospel. On Wednesday, we heard one of those discourses in which Jesus explained that he was the vine and that we are the branches. Yesterday’s reading from these discourses spoke about the importance of keeping God’s commandments and remaining in Christ’s love. In today’s discourse, what strikes me is the use of the concept of friendship, of laying down one’s life for one’s friend, of Jesus calling us his friends. From Jesus’ perspective, his disciples are not merely his students or his followers; instead, he calls them his friends. Most of us can probably think of dear friendships that we have, of friends that are as close to us as our brothers and sisters, or even closer than our biological brothers and sisters in our adult lives. Many of our great saints and theologians have addressed the ideal of friendship in their preaching and teaching. The great theologian Thomas Aquinas stated: “There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.” St Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, had this to say about friendship: “Let us reveal what is in our hearts to a friend, and let him reveal what is in his hearts to us. A friend hides nothing. If he is true, he pours forth his mind, just as the Lord Jesus poured forth the mysteries of his Father.” In the spirit of agape love, our calling as disciples of Christ is to reach out to our neighbor out of our faith and out of our entire being, to reach out in true friendship.
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