Friendship with Jesus

By Fr. Jerry Pokorsky ( bio - articles - email ) | Nov 02, 2026

Sanctity is friendship with God. How do we cultivate our friendship with Him and become saints ourselves?

Our friendship with Jesus is inseparable from His Church. We know Jesus through Church teaching (summarized by the Creed) and our sacramental encounters. Our knowledge of Christ is personal and experiential, not merely intellectual. The Gospels, born into the Church, reveal Him to us. Just as we lose ourselves in a good book, we may lose ourselves in the Gospels as we identify with many of the Gospel characters. This, too, is prayer.

Jesus is the Word made Flesh, true God and true Man. He is born into the world in humility, wrapped in swaddling clothes. In the manger, as a helpless Child, He beckons our affection. He is the Good Shepherd Who loves His flock and lays down His life for His friends. Jesus attracts us to His divinity through His humanity.

Certainly, an instantaneous revelation of Jesus’ divinity would overwhelm His followers with awe. Jesus gradually reveals His divinity during His public ministry as He fulfills the Law and the Prophets.

Jesus continues John the Baptist’s proclamation of the Kingdom of God. Jesus calls the Twelve Apostles. He befriends them. He tutors them, performs miracles demonstrating His divinity, and teaches them to love one another as He loved them.

Jesus commands the seas. His friends marvel at His authority: “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?” (Matthew 8:27) After the multiplication of the loaves, Jesus asks His Apostles, “Who do men say that the Son of man is?” Enlightened by God’s grace, Peter makes his profession of faith in the divinity of Jesus: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:13-16)

Shortly before His Passion, He raises Lazarus from the dead. Jesus reveals to Martha the promise of eternal life: “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” Her longstanding friendship with Jesus finds expression in her profession of faith: “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world.” (John 11:25-27)

On the eve of His Passion, Jesus tells His Apostles: “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. 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.” (John 15:13-15)

Friendship with Jesus sustains the Apostles and disciples through the Cross, Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost. Friendship involves more than affection or companionship; it requires sacrifice, fidelity, and a willingness to suffer for the beloved. St. Paul describes this endurance:

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. (2 Corinthians 4:8–10)

With God's grace, the saints’ love flowers into heroic witness to Jesus the Christ—true God and true Man—in the early Church, the Age of the Martyrs. Until the end of time, Christians rely on the witness of the Church as they aim for friendship with Christ.

Friendship with Jesus goes beyond losing oneself in a good book and identifying with the characters. Our spiritual life includes the demanding challenge of self-discovery and transformation in Christ. The spiritual masters identify the three ways of the spiritual life: the Purgative Way, the Illuminative Way, and the Unitive Way.

The Mass teaches us how to pray. During its celebration, we converse with God and enter into friendship with Him. The Penitential Rite is a liturgical expression of the Purgative Way. We renounce our sins and receive God’s forgiveness. The Liturgy of the Word expresses the Illuminative Way. We listen to the Scriptures, prayerfully consider the revelation, remain attentive to the clergy as guardians of Catholic truth, and make our spiritual resolutions in dialogue with God’s word. The Eucharistic Prayer expresses the Unitive Way. During the Consecration, we mystically participate in the one sacrifice of Christ, made present under sacramental signs. We literally encounter the risen Jesus under the appearances of bread and wine in Holy Communion.

Our dialogue with God through these three ways of the spiritual life forms our hearts in His love. At times, our consciences sting and move us to sorrow and repentance. We find ourselves in mysterious conversation with Him and His saints. God willing and with His grace, we may even enter into intimate and mystical union with Him in prayer, a foretaste of heavenly glory. This personal conversation with Christ is never isolated from His Church.

Through Baptism, we are incorporated into the Mystical Body of Christ. The Sacraments direct and sustain us on our journey to our heavenly home. Our friendship with Christ is inseparable from friendship with the members of His Mystical Body: “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 12:13)

The Church Militant, the Church Suffering, and the Church Triumphant comprise His Mystical Body. As members of the Church Militant, we rejoice in our communion with the angels and saints, pray for the repose of the souls of the faithful departed, and hope to join them in the glory of heaven.

Our “personal relationship with Jesus” is not contrived. Our friendship with Christ begins with the realization that we need a Redeemer, continues with conversation with Him in prayer, and culminates in communion with Him in the Church and through the Sacraments, above all, the Blessed Eucharist.