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Friday, Fifth Week of Lent B (March 26, 2021)
Your Daily Blessing: May the Lord lead you to true friends that will enrich your life. Amen!
Read Jer 20:10-13; John 10:31-42; pray Psalm 18[17].
In fact, there were two people I used to know as very close friends. Then suddenly, they became bitter enemies. I asked the one close to me what happened? He said terrible things about his former friend. How he tried to spoil his name with his business partners abroad, and almost destroyed his marriage at home because of the lies he told his wife.
The bible says, “One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother” (Prov 18:24)
Friendship is the most beautiful gift God gave to us. After God and family, it is the next most important relationship in our life here below. Some even would place it as number one, I have no real problem with that so long as God is number one, then the quality of the relationship you have with your wife, and children are at their best if it could be described as a ‘friendship’.
An anonymous author said that “to have a good friend is one of the highest delights of life; to be a good friend is one of the noblest and most difficult undertakings. And our brilliant brother St. Thomas Aquinas adds, “there is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.” It is therefore a very painful experience to have your ‘friends’ turn against you. Jeremiah lamented such experience in today’s first reading. Those who used to be his friends, became enemies, seeking his life.
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"I may have to part ways with a friend if he is a bad influence on me, leading me away from God. Apart from that, your friends are your greatest treasures, of far more value than material wealth.
"So take extra time to cultivate your friends, and take even more time to be true to them, for “no medicine is more valuable, none more efficacious, none better suited to cure our temporal ills than a friend to whom we may turn for consolation in time of trouble and with whom we many share our happiness in time of joy” (St. Alfred of Rievalulx).
PRAYER: Dear Lord, in your wisdom you gift us with true friends. Please bless all my friends out there in all their necessities. Above all, grant me the grace to be true to my friends. Amen
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