Jesus was looking intensely at the flickering computer monitor. CLICK, CLICK, CLICK
“It hasn’t change much,” Jesus sighed.
“What hasn’t, Lord?” St. Peter asked from the other table.
“My friends in Facebook,” Jesus said.
“But, Lord, you only started a few weeks ago,” St. Peter said.
“Oh yes, but even before Facebook was, I was already inviting every person to my love.”
“Maybe they’re just a little busy, and may later confirm your invitation.”
“I guess so. In the meantime, I will continue inviting the newborn ones.” Jesus smiled.
* * *
Even before Facebook came to existence, our Lord has not ceased to invite us to His love. “You are my friends, if you do what I command you,” He said in John’s Gospel. Friendship with Christ is something conditional, that is, He leaves us to freely choose to respond to His invitation.
God’s offer to every man and woman is nothing less than Heaven: eternal life and happiness. It is the answer to every person’s earthly longings. Still He doesn’t impose it on us. Man’s free response is indispensable if this response is to be called love.
If this is so, why do only a few people respond to God’s invitation? Why are we, so to speak, only satisfied with clicking on LIKE instead of choosing to CONFIRM His call? The answer is found in man’s ignorance, and also as a consequence his reluctance to complicate his life due to his attachment to life’s immediate material gratification.
Thus, Pope Benedict XVI says: “Happiness is something we all want, but one of the great tragedies of this world is that so many people never find it, because they look for it in the wrong places. The key to it is very simple—true happiness is to be found in God. We need the courage to place our deepest hopes in God alone, not in money, in a career, in worldly success or in our relationships with others, but in God. Only He can satisfy our deepest needs of our hearts.” (Address to Students of UK Catholic Schools, 17-IX-2010)
To accept God’s invitation means “doing what He commands us to do.” In other words, to do His will, to allow Him into our lives, and to become His instruments. Indeed, God can complicate our lives beyond the simple POKE or LIKE because He wants to transform and identify us with His Life. Thus, St. Theresa of Avila once complained to our Lord when she figured in a carriage accident. Our Lord replied, “This is how I treat my friends on earth.” The saint wittily replied, “No wonder you have very few friends here on earth.”
In the same address, the pope underlined God’s desire to become our friend. “God wants your friendship. And once you enter into friendship with God, everything in your life begins to change. As you come to know Him better, you find you want to reflect something of His infinite goodness in your own life. You are attracted to the practice of virtue. You begin to see greed and selfishness and all the other sins for what they really are, destructive and dangerous tendencies that cause deep suffering and do great damage, and you want to avoid falling into that trap yourselves. (…) You want to come to the aid of the poor and the hungry, you want to comfort and sorrowful, you want to be kind and generous. And once these things begin to matter to you, you are well on the way to becoming saints.”
Let us be sensitive to God’s unceasing invitations. It is through this friendship—both human and divine—with Jesus that fills us with the greatest confidence before our Father God when our Lord says: “And then the Father will give you anything you ask Him in my name.”