Have you noticed that some people seem to muddle their way through life, sometimes making good decisions and sometimes poor ones? There are other people who seem to be decent people who strive to do the most good and the least harm. And then there are some others who walk with God. They have a friendship with God and speak with God and God speaks with them. These friends of God have a certain serenity about them and a level of compassion that emanates from them in such a way that you know you are in the company of someone who is genuinely a friend of God.
When you and I were baptized, this is what we were called to: to be a friend of God. To walk with God.
We celebrate today the Baptism of the Lord, the First Luminous Mystery of the Rosary. What can we learn from the Lord’s baptism? One thing is this: if the Incarnate Word of God saw it fitting and proper to be baptized, then does it not stand to reason that in the Lord’s eyes baptism is really, really important?
One who is baptized has gone through a doorway to the
Do we not see the message of comfort the Lord is giving us in today’s Scriptures and in the fact that we are baptized and in the fact that we are called to be God’s friends? He calls us to hear the message of the prophet Isaiah: “Comfort, give comfort to my people.” In the days of Isaiah that message of comfort was giving hope to a people that had been sorely oppressed. It was also a prophecy about the Messiah, that the Messiah, when he comes, will give comfort to all who follow him.
And what is that comfort that the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One, Jesus, gives to those who follow him? It is the comfort of salvation promised us in baptism; or to put it in the words of Isaiah: “Here is your God! Here comes with power the Lord God, who rules by a strong arm; here is his reward with him, his recompense before him. Like a shepherd he feeds his flock; in his arms he gathers the lambs, carrying them in his bosom, and leading the ewes with care.”
To be a friend of God means to have done more than gone through the doorway of baptism. It also means to adjust one’s life to the ways of the Lord. Or to put this in the words of St. Paul to Titus: “The grace of God has appeared, saving all and training us to reject godless ways and worldly desires and to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age, as we await the blessed hope,
the appearance of the glory of our great God and savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to deliver us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for himself a people as his own, eager to do what is good.”
A friend of God does not tell God what I will or will not do, nor does a friend of God declare by one’s own authority that what was formerly seen as lawlessness is now a choice one can freely make. A friend of God finds peace not in one’s own will but in the will of God. A friend of God lives in hope, abides in love, knows forgiveness and can ultimately extend forgiveness to those who need it, whether they want to be forgiven or not.
A friend of God trusts in God, no matter what may happen. A friend of God talks with God and listens as God speaks, either in prayer, or in the liturgy or in the events of life. A friend of God cannot imagine staying away from the Eucharist. In fact, a friend of God will say, “I cannot live without the Eucharist.”
A friend of God yearns for God, desires God, looks for God, yet knows the pain of not yet possessing Him. A friend of God knows the meaning of the poetry of the Song of Songs: “On my bed at night I sought him whom my heart loves- I sought him but I did not find him. I will rise then and go about the city; in the streets and crossings I will seek Him whom my heart loves. I sought him but I did not find him. The watchmen came upon me as they made their rounds of the city: Have you seen him whom my heart loves? I had hardly left them when I found him whom my heart loves. I took hold of him and would not let him go.” So, my dear people, do you too want to be a friend of God?
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