Lk 6: 12-19
Now during those days he went out to the mountain to pray; and he spent the night in prayer to God. And when day came, he called his disciples and chose twelve of them, whom he also named apostles: Simon, whom he named Peter, and his brother Andrew, and James, and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Simon, who was called the Zealot, and Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.
He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
Maintaining Friendships
A joke going around the internet lately goes something like this “we never seem to talk about Jesus’ greatest miracle… that he maintained twelve close friends in His thirties”. As silly as this seems, it highlights something important. Jesus called these imperfect twelve because he knew the value of friendship. He prayed before choosing them and discerned who those most important people would be.
We need to have friends who don’t want anything from us other than to know us. Friendship is so often overlooked because of the constraints of everything else in our world. Work, family, and everything else seems to get in the way of maintaining our friendships. Let us recommit to those relationships and follow Jesus in this way because “Without friends there is no living, and to take friendship away is nothing else than to take the sun out of the sky” (St. Peter Canisius, SJ).
—Alex Hale, SJ, is a Jesuit scholastic from the Midwest Province studying philosophy at Loyola University Chicago.
Prayer
Jesus… Best Friend, may your soul give life to me, may your flesh be food for me, may you warm my hardened heart.
Jesus… Best Friend, may your tears now wash me clean, may Your Passion keep me strong, may you listen to my plea.
Jesus… Best Friend, may your wounds take in my hurts, may your gaze be fixed on me, may I not betray Your Love.
Jesus… Best Friend, may you call me at death’s door, may you hold me close to you, may you place me with God’s saints, may I ever sing your praise. Amen.
—From David Fleming, SJ’s book Draw Me Into Your Friendship, The Spiritual Exercises, inspired by the Prayer “Soul of Christ”