The other day I happened to hear a homily focusing almost entirely on friendship, coinciding with my own thinking thereupon. In these coming days my reflections may draw from many of the priest's words, which reflected so closely my own life experience.
At this moment, I want to speak to a comment he made about how his friends were those who had chosen him rather than those he had chosen. My experience has been much the same. I wonder whether this experience differs according to introversion and extraversion. Regardless of that fact, however, there perhaps is a truth that we all experience: how others seem to find in us something that draws them to us and makes them desire our friendship even when we do not think ourselves worthwhile.
It is amazing how that act of choosing friends can draw us up out of ourselves—whether because we are choosing to seek out friends or because we are the ones being chosen. It gives us confidence. It sheds light upon our many good qualities often hidden beneath the shadow of our weaknesses and failings from our own perspective.
I will not now call you servants: for the servant knoweth not what his lord doth. But I have called you friends: because all things whatsoever I have heard of My Father, I have made known to you. You have not chosen Me: but I have chosen you; and have appointed you, that you should go, and should bring forth fruit; and your fruit should remain: that whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in My name, He may give it you. These things I command you, that you love one another.
These words from John 15:15 speak to that idea of choosing. In our relationship with Christ, it is He who chooses us. How much it means to be thus chosen!
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