Jesus, Our Wisest and Truest Friend

In his Summa theologiae, St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that Christ is “our wisest and truest friend.” Our Lord himself, in John 15:15, tells us:

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.

What does friendship with Christ look like? How should we understand his friendship? We can begin by considering friendship in general. Every friendship has two important characteristics: 

1. Friends do things together. 
2. Friends rejoice in one another’s company.

To put this a bit more formally, friends delight in a common or shared activity, and they rejoice in mutual fellowship. If Christ the Lord names us friends, this must mean that he enables us to do something with him (i.e., that we share some common activity with him) and also that we share fellowship (or, to use the word given in the Gospel of John, that we abide) with him. As our wisest friend, the work that he shares with us would be the greatest possible work imaginable, and his company would be most blessed, since he is the Incarnate Son of God, the Eternal Word made flesh.

Put simply, Catholic theology gives the name “merit” to the work that Christ calls us to share with him in friendship. First, we will consider merit in light of the friendship of Christ. Next, we will consider the friendship of Christ and his Eucharistic presence, since it is through the Eucharist that he makes good his promise to abide with his Church.

Friendship with Christ and Merit

The word “merit” became a bit of a Catholic buzzword especially after the Protestant Reformation, which flatly denied any possibility of merit on the part of human beings. Nevertheless, merit continues to play a prominent role in the Catholic Church. In the Mass, for example, “merit” shows up frequently and is always connected to eternal life. Some examples from some of the prayers during Ordinary Time:

• One of the prayers after communion asks God that “we may merit to enter the kingdom of heaven.” 
• One of the collects prays that “we may merit to enter into the inheritance which you have promised.” 
• Another prayer after communion prays that “we may merit also to be his coheirs in heaven.”
• The closing words of Eucharistic Prayer II ask God the Father that, along with the Blessed Mother, St. Joseph, and all the apostles and saints, “we may merit to be coheirs to eternal life, and may praise and glorify you through Christ our Lord.”

Why does the word “merit” show up so frequently in the Mass? To our Protestant friends, it can sound like we Catholics think that we can “earn” our way into heaven. Scripture is clear, however, that the only way we enter heaven is through Jesus. He alone is the gate (John 10:7). He alone is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6), and no one can approach the Father except through him. In no way, then, can we “work” our way to heaven or “earn” God’s love or favor. Further, in 1 Timothy 2:5 we read, “For there is one God. There is also one mediator between God and the human race, Christ Jesus.” If there is only one “mediator,” then how can we pray so often in the Mass to merit eternal life?

There are a few ways this question can be answered. To begin with, the Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms:

With regard to God, there is no strict right to any merit on the part of man. Between God and us there is an immeasurable inequality, for we have received everything from him, our Creator.

That is, on our own, human beings can in no way merit anything from God, much less the grace of eternal salvation. Merit, then, must be understood in a qualified sense. It is a Christocentric reality, one inseparable from the work of Christ on the Cross, and is only possible because Christ invites us to share in this work: The Catechism states as much when, drawing on the teaching of the Council of Trent, it continues: 

The merit of man before God in the Christian life arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of his grace.

Debates about the nature of merit can seem rather arcane and technical. However, the best way to understand this business about merit is through the lens of our friendship with the Lord. Christ calls us his friends, and friends do things together. As our greatest and truest friend, Christ indeed saves us, but he does not do so in a way that excludes our participation in his sacrifice. Rather, as our friend he wants to include us in his great work of redemption.

Catholic theologian Christopher Malloy has devoted many pages to the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas on friendship. In one particularly illuminating passage, Malloy explains how our friendship with Christ means that we are enabled by the Lord to share in his great work of redemption—in a word, how Christ allows us to merit eternal life. Malloy writes:

In his treatment of Christ’s satisfaction for sin, Aquinas highlights the depths of mercy. Clearly, God shows his compassion for us in sending His Son to die for our salvation, who bears our pains. This bearing of pain is not substitutionary, however, but inclusive. Suffering alone in His redeeming act, He works to awaken love in us. We, in turn, suffer with Him, who has made us His friends. Since we suffer with Him, we share in the (subjective) redemption. Christ’s mercy extends to the point of enabling us to pay with Him through suffering for love of Him who suffered.

Friends do things together. His sacrifice awakens love in us, and the Lord delights when we take up our cross daily with him (see Luke 9:23). Think of the words in Romans 8:17, where St. Paul writes that “we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.” Exactly right. Friends do things together, and the Lord invites and makes possible our suffering with him, and this is what “merit” means. It is only possible through Christ our friend. Think of a parent who lovingly lets their small child sit on their lap and “drive” the car. Unlike that example, however, our participation in Christ’s cross is a true and real act, in union with our friend, who calls us also to share in the glory of his eternal kingdom.

Friendship with Christ and His Eucharistic Presence

Let us now reflect on the second characteristic of friendship—namely, the bodily presence desired by friends. This second feature of our friendship with Christ comes to fruition in the Eucharist—the sacramental Real Presence of the Lord—to us his friends.

The most characteristic feature of friendship, according to the philosopher Aristotle, is the desire shared by the friends to be in one another’s company. He defined friendship, in fact, using the Greek word koinonia, a word that means a fellowship, a sharing, a communion. St. Paul used this same word in 1 Cor. 1:9 to describe the relationship between Jesus and members of the Church: “God is faithful, and by him you were called to fellowship (koinonia) with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” Friends rejoice in each other’s company.

The desire of friends to be together is a desire for physical, bodily presence. Love seeks the real presence—not the virtual presence—of the beloved. That is, friendship is not satisfied merely by a fellowship mediated by, say, an electronic screen. Neither will a symbolic presence suffice. Human beings are embodied persons, and so our most real and authentic encounters must involve bodily presence to one another.

We know this to be true whenever we speak of “long-distance relationships.” Love suffers by separation and yearns to be reunited physically. Letters, phone calls, video calls, and so forth can temporarily assuage the sadness of physical separation, but they cannot substitute for it. We know this when, for example, we behold the joy of a soldier who is at last reunited with his family after a long deployment. Their tears testify to the unsubstitutability of real, bodily presence. Friends rejoice in each other’s company.

Sacramental theologian Fr. Dominic Langevin, OP, penned a wonderful essay during the COVID pandemic in which he appealed to the embodied nature of human beings and our desire for bodily presence to one another, in order to clarify that electronic substitutes, though convenient, can never replace bodily presence. He notes: 

Electronic communication is not enough. And there is a reason that those watching Mass on TV know that it is not the same thing as physically being at Mass. This is why they hunger to be back in church. The TV screen’s Eucharist is not the Real Presence. We human beings are physical. Christian salvation and communion are also physical.

This idea is central to all the sacraments of the Church, especially the Eucharist. In fact, St. Thomas draws on Aristotle’s definition of friendship as a kind of proof for the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Christ’s love for us is so great, says St. Thomas, that he would not deprive us of his bodily presence even in this life, but even now unites us to himself in the Eucharist, that we might dwell together physically as we make our pilgrim way. St. Thomas teaches:

Secondly, this belongs to Christ’s love, out of which for our salvation He assumed a true body of our nature. And because it is the special feature of friendship to live together with friends, as the Philosopher says . . . He promises us His bodily presence as a reward, saying (Matt 24:28): “Where the body is, there shall the eagles be gathered together.” Yet meanwhile in our pilgrimage He does not deprive us of His bodily presence; but unites us with Himself in this sacrament through the truth of His body and blood. Hence (John 6:57) he says: “He that eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, abideth in Me, and I in him.” Hence this sacrament is the sign of supreme charity, and the uplifter of our hope, from such familiar union of Christ with us.

What Christians Believe

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It is exactly this physical presence, this bodily fellowship, that the Eucharist both is and makes possible. When Christ is present to us in the Eucharist, he is not present virtually, and he is not present symbolically. He is present sacramentally—that is to say, his whole self is really present, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, under the forms of bread and wine. The Lord comes to us as our greatest and truest friend, not virtually or symbolically, but really, truly, physically, bodily. Christ wants to abide with us, and friends rejoice in each other’s company.

The sacramental Real Presence of Christ our friend in the Eucharist allows the Church to read with simple and clear faith the “abide” language of the Gospel of John. Among the many verses are the following:

• John 6:56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.
• John 15:4 Abide in me, as I abide in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it abides on the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me.
• John 15:5 I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.
• John 15:9–10 As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.

In the Eucharist, Christ abides with us because he is our wisest and truest friend. In his presence, even today, we rejoice, as friends rejoice in each other’s company.