Everything flows from a confidence in Jesus - from our book 'A MESSAGE FOR ITS OWN TIME'.

Anne Bardell • July 14, 2025

EVERYTHING FLOWS FROM

a close friendship with Jesus


Jesus longs for friendship with you


Many of the good people I have served in parishes have told me that they pray to God, but, when we dig deeper, their prayer is mainly striving to do his will and be morally good, asking a lot for help, and, less frequently, giving thanks - praise is particularly difficult and often mechanical. Some have told me that they pray to Our Lady, and that they feel her motherly care for them, but their feelings for Jesus are mainly venerating him at a distance as God and trying to imitate him as a human being. For many, a close friendship with Jesus frequently sounds alien. These are good people who are living good lives, but the fact remains that they need more. They need Jesus’ close friendship.

Also, amazingly, Jesus needs close friendship with each of us. Read these intense words of his from the Last Supper as he pours out his heart to his disciples:

        ‘I will not leave you orphans

I will come back to you

In a short time the world will no longer see me;

But you will see me’.[1]

 

‘If anyone loves me he will keep my word,

and my Father will love him,

and we shall come to him

and make our home with him’. [2]

In Revelations, the last book of the Bible, Jesus says:

‘Look, I am standing at the door, knocking. If one of you hears me calling and opens the door, I will come in to share his meal, side by side with him’.[3] 

 

         These are words of a close and very intimate friend. In the last chapter of St John’s Gospel, Jesus takes aside Peter, who is consumed with self-hatred because he has deserted and rejected Jesus publicly three times. Jesus simply asks him ‘Do you love me?’[4] three times. These are not the words of a distant God, but one who loves us so much that he comes among us and calls each one of us to friendship.


         Friendship starts when we move from knowing about someone to knowing and caring for them intimately. It is a movement from the head to the heart. Once a person is in your heart, they have some control over your happiness. If you love someone with all your heart, you give them utter control. Jesus asks you to give him just that, which frightens most of us, because we have to trust big time. We have been wounded by others so many times in our lives that we wrap a shield around ourselves and find it very hard to let anyone else in. Believing in someone is difficult. Yet many times in the Gospels, Jesus asks people who are requesting a cure ‘do you believe?’ [5]

‘Only have faith’.[6]

What did this puzzling question mean? It certainly did not mean ‘do you believe I am the Son of God become flesh in order to redeem the human race?’ It was only after the resurrection that they began to realise that this was the case. What did he mean then? He was asking them to open their hearts to God, even though they found that challenging. Basically, Jesus was asking them to step out of their usual thought processes by which they normally made sense of the world and felt that they had some control, and instead, to give the initiative to God. He wants them to begin to say ‘I am in your hands’. He knew that the cure they asked for was dependant on their surrender to God, even if it was a weak surrender, like the father of the sick child who replied: ‘Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief’.[7]

Each time we open and give our hearts to God, we allow him to act in gracious and wonderful ways. It is the heart that matters. Many people believe that Jesus is the Word made flesh, but only with their heads. What he wants is that we give him our hearts, because it is all about love. As our intimacy with Jesus deepens we become more like him and we take our place more surely in God’s restoration of the face of the earth[8].

In the Gospels, Jesus never required his disciples to accept formulas summarising the truths about God. These dogmas were gradually defined over centuries because lovers of Jesus wanted to know more surely the truth about him in order to know him better personally. They wanted to walk with him like the disciples travelling to Emmaus. They wanted to find their hearts ‘burning within’ them as he explains the scriptures to them.[9] He could have sent those disciples a long letter giving the same teaching, but it was in the encounter with the stranger, the fellow traveller, that the Emmaus walkers came alive. He not only imparted knowledge, but he gave love, skilfully working on their hearts not just their minds. He gave encouragement and personal attention, moving them to wonder. This wonder caused them to urge him to stay the night and finally to recognise him ‘at the breaking of bread’.[10]

Jesus walks, often unrecognised, with you and me, but he wants us to recognise him and be in love with him. He is calling, but we will not hear unless we reach the point of seeking him. The two Emmaus disciples had known Jesus, perhaps for years, but it was only when they thought they had lost him that they yearned for him. Their hearts were ready to open to his deep and personal love. Each of us needs to yearn to know him personally.

There comes a moment when we invite him into our hearts for the first time. He will always respond. He yearns for us much more than we yearn for him. Once he has come through the door of our hearts the relationship will develop. Sometimes he will seem to withdraw, but that is to invite you to seek him even more deeply. Sometimes he will speak words into your mind. Much of the time, you will find him quietly inspiring you as you ponder the events of your life and ask for his guidance. You will also be led into the mystery of his divinity, which transcends our capacity to know. Then the response is stillness, wonder, worship and awe – sometimes fear.

None of us is truly religious if we only know about God and do not have a personal relationship with Jesus. God will never be satisfied with any relationship with us except love. There is no escaping the fact that close friendship with Jesus is necessary for a full Christian life. That is because Christian life is about being incorporated into the Trinity, and Trinity life consists entirely of personal relationships. As the Holy Spirit’s action within us grows, we realise more and more that the Father offers us nothing less than a personal loving closeness through Jesus. Jesus is the face that God presents to us. This earth was made so that we human beings can have and live Trinity life, and lead all creation into the heavenly love affair.

The Chapter on friendship with Jesus moves on to stress that Catholics view this friendship not just as a one-to-one relationship, but a relationship with Jesus in his body, his Church.)

 

(If you wish to read of the book A Message For Its Own Time, click OUR BOOK at the top of this page)

 

 


 
[1] Jn 14: 18-19

[2] Jn 14: 23

[3] Rev 3:20

[4] Jn 21: 15 ff

[5] Jn 9:35; Mt 9: 28

[6] For example Mk 5: 37

[7] Mk 9: 25

[8] Ps 104: 30

[9] Lk 24: 32

[10] Lk 24: 35


Comment on this article