Henri Nouwen said of friendship: “When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.”

This definition is more in keeping with Jesus’ definition of friendship in today’s Gospel because it speaks to the sacrificial love that marks Jesus’ relationship with us. Laying down his life for us, Jesus takes the meaning of friendship to new heights because the relationship is founded on a love that comes from God, a love that demands remaining in love to experience God-given joy, and a love that is defined by the very life of Jesus. The good news is that this exquisite kind of friendship is continually offered to us by God, and if we enter into such a friendship, our joy will be “complete.” We are called to live out the same kind of sacrificial love in our own friendships with one another, dying to self so that we can be totally available to the other.

Another of my favorite quotes about friendship is: “A true friend is someone who actually listens to your answer when he or she asks you, ‘How are you?’” In a funny way, that describes the self-giving nature of Christian friendship: in a true friendship, we check our ego at the door and spend time caring for the friend before us. Nouwen opts for friends who are not afraid to enter the world of our hurts and scars along with our joys and achievements. How smart of him because when it’s all said and done, it was the wounds of Jesus that saved us.

What a friend we have in Jesus!

Yours in the Risen Christ,