God calls humanity to friendship through His Word, Pope Leo says in audience on Vatican II

January 14, 2026

At the beginning of his new series of Wednesday general audiences on the Second Vatican Council and its documents, Pope Leo XIV spoke this morning about Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (1965).

“A fundamental point of Christian faith, which Dei Verbum reminds us of,” is that “Jesus Christ radically transforms man’s relationship with God, which is henceforth a relationship of friendship,” Pope Leo said during the audience, which took place in Paul VI Audience Hall (video). “Therefore, the only condition of the new covenant is love.”

Citing St. Augustine, Pope Leo said that grace alone “can make us friends of God in his Son ... We are not equal to God, but God himself makes us similar to Him in his Son.”

“For this reason, as we can see in all the Scripture, in the Covenant there is a first moment of distance, in which the pact between God and mankind always remains asymmetrical: God is God and we are creatures,” the Pope continued. “However, with the coming of the Son in human flesh, the Covenant opens up to its final purpose: in Jesus, God makes us sons and daughters, and calls us to become like Him, albeit in our fragile humanity.”

Citing Dei Verbum, Pope Leo explained:

When this dialogue [between God and man] was interrupted by sin, the Creator did not cease to seek an encounter with his creatures and to establish a covenant with them. In the Christian Revelation, that is, when God became man in his Son in order to seek us out, the dialogue that had been interrupted is restored in a definitive manner: the Covenant is new and eternal, nothing can separate us from his love. The Revelation of God, then, has the dialogical nature of friendship and, as in the experience of human friendship, it does not tolerate silence, but is nurtured by the exchange of true words.

Dei Verbum, the Pontiff said, also teaches that “God speaks to us.”

“It is important to recognize the difference between words and chatter: this latter stops at the surface and does not achieve communion between people, whereas in authentic relationships, the word serves not only to exchange information and news, but to reveal who we are,” the Pope said. “The word possesses a revelatory dimension that creates a relationship with the other. In this way, by speaking to us, God reveals himself to us as an Ally who invites us into friendship with Him.”

“From this perspective, the first attitude to cultivate is listening, so that the divine Word may penetrate our minds and our hearts; at the same time, we are required to speak with God, not to communicate to him what He already knows, but to reveal ourselves to ourselves,” Pope Leo added.

The Pontiff concluded:

Hence the need for prayer, in which we are called to live and to cultivate friendship with the Lord. This is achieved first of all in liturgical and community prayer, in which we do not decide what to hear from the Word of God, but it is He Himself who speaks to us through the Church; it is then achieved in personal prayer, which takes place in the interiority of the heart and mind. Time dedicated to prayer, meditation and reflection cannot be lacking in the Christian’s day and week. Only when we speak with God can we also speak about Him.

Our experience tells us that friendships can come to an end through a dramatic gesture of rupture, or because of a series of daily acts of neglect that erode the relationship until it is lost. If Jesus calls us to be friends, let us not leave this call unheeded. Let us welcome it, let us take care of this relationship, and we will discover that friendship with God is our salvation.

 

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Further information:

• General Audience (Dicastery for Communication - Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1/14/26)
• Pope begins new series of general audiences about Vatican II and its documents (CWN, 1/8/26)