Daily Mass Gospel Reflection - Friendly Game Changer

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus announces to his disciples: “I no 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.”

Many mysticisms and philosophies of the ancient world—Platonism and Gnosticism come readily to mind—spoke of God or the sacred, but they spoke of it as a force or a value or an ontological source. It was impersonal and at an infinite remove from the world of ordinary experience. These ancient schools find an echo in many modern and contemporary theologies. Think of deism, which was so influential on the founders of the United States, or even the New Age philosophy of our time. These speak of a “divine” principle or power, but one would never dream of addressing such a force as “thou” or of engaging with it in intimate conversation.

Then there is the Bible. The Scriptures obviously present God as the overwhelming, transcendent, uncontrollable, inscrutable Creator of the heavens and the earth, but they insist that this sublime and frightening power is a person who deigns to speak to us, to guide us, and to invite us into his life.

In making that utterance—that he no longer called his disciples slaves, but friends—Jesus turned all of religious philosophy and mysticism on its head.

Man's BEST FRIEND....

No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.

And the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God.

You are my friends if you do what I command you.

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