You are My Friends

 

 How beautiful is it to know that we are all connected to each other through the love of God. As Jesus prepares to leave his earthly realm, he speaks of our being connected with him and each other through his telling of the story of the vine. His juxtaposing himself with us and with the father creates an image of a vine that, in keeping by nature, becomes intertwined into itself as it goes on and on. If properly nurtured and cared for, tender growth becomes hardened branches and produces fruit. Throughout this chapter (John 15:9-17) Jesus wants us to know that God is not at the periphery of our being, he is at the center with us and Jesus. We are made to feel one with God and Jesus as he asks us to abide in him, remain with him, and be at home with him.

Jesus reinforces this connectedness by removing any sense of status or hierarchy between himself and his followers: “You are my friends…I know longer call you ‘slaves,’ because a slave does not know what his master is doing, I have called you friends because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. As friends we are equal with Jesus and with each other and have a solemn obligation to love…look out for and care for each other.” 

Whether we like one another or not, Jesus commands us to look out for each other's good - even to the point of giving our life. The point is not that we should be just friends but we are friends for a purpose to bear fruit - fruit that lasts.

We relive the experience of the vine and our connectedness in the celebration of the Eucharist with the solemn words that end the mysterious event of the consecration. Through him, with him, and in him in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honor and glory is yours, Almighty Father, for ever and ever. Through him, because only through Christ does humanity have access to the Father and because his existence as God-man and his work of salvation are the fullest glorification of the Father;
With him, because all authentic prayer is the fruit of union with Christ and at the same time buttresses this union, and because in honoring the Son one honors the Father and vice versa; 

In him, because the praying church is Christ himself, with every individual praying member as a part of his Mystical Body, and because the Father is in the Son and the Son the reflection of the Father, who makes his majesty visible. The dual meanings of through, with, and in clearly express the God-man’s mediation.

This prayer is the prayer of the ever-living Christ embodied during his human life. St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (1891-1942): Before the Face of God