Best Friend

When you’re seven years old, the world is pure wonder. You’re not hardened to the realities of the immutable laws of physics. Your imagination sees past those laws.

This is when you are most attuned to God’s voice.

My second-grade class paraded into church — a double column of waddling ducks in ill-fitting suits and bowl haircuts (ah, the Seventies). It was our First Reconciliation, and our parents and families were there snapping pictures and smiling.

The actual event of sitting with the priest and listing my long forgotten sins wasn’t significant. What struck me most was the feeling that filled my core and lasted after I left the confessional, sat in the pew, rode in the car home and enjoyed my family celebration.

I felt clean.

More, I felt that the One who had cleansed and polished me, refined my spirit in white heat, had taken up residence within me.

And I in Him.

Those who live in Christ are not outside of God . . . rather they are in God as friends. — Bishop Robert Barron.

I couldn’t explain it then and, really, can’t do it justice with words now. I tried to tell my parents how I felt — I was clean! — and they nodded and smiled and said “that’s great” and gave me my gift (a camera!).

What started then and there was a friendship that has lasted my entire life, but that is not to say that everything was unicorns and rainbows.

There have been many times in my life when I ignored my Friend, was angry with Him, stopped talking to Him, thought Him irrelevant.

There were many times when I mistook this feeling — this gift — as an entitlement, believing that I was due a perfect life filled with earthly success and fame in which every activity I pursued bore immense fruit and the world recognized my uniqueness.

My Friend had different plans for me.

There have been many good things, and people, in my life, but these were mixed with trials and disappointments. I have failed. Others have failed me.

God purifies those He loves, and He loves all of us.

People, jobs, things come and go but my Friend has remained constant. Always present. His love never changed, never lessened. And He’s always just a quiet moment, a gaze, a prayer away.

The constant Listener.

You can have this friendship, too. In fact, building this friendship is the ultimate point of this life. Pray for it. And keep returning to Him in prayer.

Assume the trust and innocence of a seven-year-old.

He will respond to you in His own time and way, a way that is crafted particularly for you.

For prayer is nothing else than being friends with God. — St. Teresa of Avila.