Pastor's Points: Friendship and Prayer

Pastor's Points: Friendship and Prayer 

Hopefully all of us have some really good friends in this life. Friends are important people to us. They are the people who walk with us through life and share in our sorrows and joys, our hopes and dreams. These are the people that go with us to a movie, or on vacation, or with whom we can share a great meal. 

Years ago, Deacon Greg Kandra wrote an article for America: The National Catholic News Weekly on Friendship as Prayer. I came across it again recently and was struck by his words. The author spent some time at a Benedictine Abby with a friend and had some wonderful insights into prayer and friendship. I offer the following excerpts taken from Deacon Kandra’s article for your reflection. 

"…For all the riches on monastic prayer, there was another prayer that engaged me that weekend. It is a kind of everyday psalmody–found in conversation, a laugh, a shrug, a nod. It is the prayer we all whisper at one time or another. 

It is the simple liturgy of friends. For friendship is, at its best, a prayer. 

It is, after all, an act of faith. It is sacred. It is an epistle, delivered from one person to another. In its best moments, friendship is a canticle that celebrates, a parable that teaches. In the close proximity of a friend, you find a cathedral where promises are kept, and a chapel where tears are shed. Friendship is a responsorial psalm: one heart speaks, another responds, and in the silences in between we hear something of God. 

Jesus–no stranger to friendship, or to its swift reversal, betrayal–said that wherever two or more are gathered in his name, there He is too. 

Perhaps when we seek a friend, we are seeking God, the God who dwells in all of us, the God in whose image we have all been made. Perhaps in friendship he is there waiting to be found, the God of laughter and companionship, the God of shared secrets and long stories and strong coffee, the God who is comfortable just kicking back. He is there to listen because that is what friends are there for. He is there to guide us on the journey, to see that we are not alone and that there is someone with us who can read the map. He is there to help us find faith in one another, at moments when that particular faith may be all that we have. He is there to let us know that someone else understands our pain, shares our joy, and thankfully, gets our jokes. 

Out of that, we are encouraged and given hope. Out of that, I believe, we are given God.” 

(Kandra, Greg. “Friendship is Prayer.” America, March 17, 2003: 16-17.) 

I would invite you to think about the really close friends whom you have in this life. Who are you best friends? What makes them so? Can you see a bit of the sacredness in these people of which Deacon Kandra writes? I love his image of the “simple liturgy of friends.” Hopefully we will always be surrounded in our life with that liturgy of people with whom we share our lives, who love us unconditionally and in whom we get a glimpse of God.