It all comes down to three words: love one another!
These words coming from Jesus also have the power to see to it that they can be accomplished. In this gospel passage Jesus tells us exactly the kind of love he is talking about – the kind of love that he is empowering us to carry out: the kind where you lay down one's life for [your] friends (whether you even know them or not – we are all potentially friends in the sight of God). Then, he says: you are my friends if you do what I command: and that is to love as a friend loves. It's a kind of energizing, dynamic, never-ending circle: loving others, friending others [this can only multiply in kind]. In the loving, in the friending comes to power to love some more and friend some more! This is the power of the resurrection given by the Holy Spirit.
Jesus chooses each of us to love, to friend in different and unique situations: but we are all called to give our all doing this loving and friending. He says that in the process we may ask for whatever we might need to make the loving and friending successful and we will get it – this is praying properly, not simply for what we want for ourselves, but rather for how we can best be used as instruments in the hands of God so that he can loves those he wants using us!
May we ask God to give us just what we need today to generously and lovingly friend others – all others, whether we know them personally or not!
Everyone at least deserves "godly respect" as the starting point to establishing a communion in Divine Friendship with them!
I call you my friends, says the Lord, for I have made know to you all that the Father has told me!
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