Being friends with Him

If you desire to be a friend of Christ it is because you want your life to be fertile ground for God to use. This friendship makes our lives into a "centre of faith", a building brick for God's Kingdom. Friendship with Him is not the preserve of priests and religious or any who follow a specific calling in life. In fact there are more lay people than there are priests and religious, and the more friends of Christ there are in the secular world, the greater is the opportunity for our culture to be evangelised.

Developing your friendship with Christ, or better said, allowing Him to develop His friendship with you is the basis of what it means to be a Catholic. Our approach to the Christian Life then does not begin with vocational discernment but with getting to know Him. This is the basis of the FWC Retreats for young people which Fr Julian and myself are offering. The Holy Father speaking last October said:

"Whoever wants to be a friend of Jesus and become his authentic disciple – be it seminarian, priest, Religious or lay person – must cultivate an intimate friendship with him in meditation and prayer. The deepening of Christian truths and the study of theology and other religious disciplines presupposes an education to silence and contemplation, because one must become capable of listening to God speaking in the heart."

It is in the context of a relationship of friendship with Christ that a vocation will be discerned and embraced. Moreover, a new culture flows from our lives when they are lived in this friendship, whether you are a student, a worker, a trainee, a father, a mother, a priest, a religious, a son or a daughter. The new culture - a witness to grace!

We will continue to offer FWC Retreats and the build on the experience of friendship which we and young people share with Christ, and we will do this right under the nose of the neo-pagan culture in which we live.

St Justin, pray for all of us.