Realising the worth in your Good Friday friends

Fr Jason Murphy has a special message this Good Friday in his column, Let the Busy World Be Hushed...

There’s a children’s book called The Little Prince and it was first introduced to me by a music teacher of old, Sr Cecilia, who taught the piano to children in Belturbet for 20 years and more after her retirement from teaching. It was left at the end of the piano after a lesson in the days leading up to Christmas wrapped in holly covered paper with a chocolate bar and a tangerine sitting on top.

It told the story of a little Prince who visits the earth from another to learn much in his travels but, over time, becomes very lonely and longs desperately to meet a friend.

One day whilst out walking, he met with a bushy tailed fox who was wandering along looking as forlorn as himself and so he stopped to talk to the fox.

After a some moments he asked the fox might he play with him for a while, but the fox in reply told the boy ‘I can’t play with you,’ ‘why?’ asked the little Prince, ‘because’ said the fox , ‘no one has ever bothered to befriend me, to teach me how to play as little boys play.’

‘And how do you become a friend?’ asked the little Prince. ‘You become friends replied the fox ‘by establishing ties’. ‘Establishing ties?’ asked the confused little Prince.

‘Well put it like this’ said the fox ‘to me you are a little boy like all the other little boys in the world and I to you are nothing more than another little fox like all the other foxes in the world… a boy and a fox, mere strangers who have met in passing… but if you were to become my friend, I would be unique in all the world to you and you would be unique in all the world to me.’

Oh I’d love to become your friend said the little Prince, I really would but my time on earth is short and I have so little time and so much to understand.

‘Ah’ said the fox ‘to befriend takes time and no one has time any more. People buy things ready made on the shelf but there is no shelf from which you buy a friend.’

‘Okay' said the little Prince ‘what must I do to become your friend?’

‘You must be very patient, you must sit each day a distance away from me in the grass and, as the days pass, you will move a little closer and a little closer until one day after some time, unbeknownst to each other we will be sitting side by side in the grass and then we will have become friends’.

And so it was that they sat in the grass and, as each day passed, they move closer and closer in the long grass until one day they became the best of all friends.

It was a story and a book that remained with me always, a story of how friendship develops over time, never in a hurry with people you often least expect. Sometimes it happens out of nowhere but what you learn as you go through life is that friendship is rarely formed in a hurry, you must sit a distance apart in the long grass of life and move closer and closer over time until unbeknownst to you have become the best of all friends.

You learn quickly not to fall for the one who claps you on the back and tells you that you are a great fella when all is going well for you. Value those who want nothing from you, who stand a distance away and whom you come to know over time, for they, are the ones who will be with you in your hour of need. It’s a lesson you learn through the ups and downs of life.

In the gospels of Holy week, we see the crowds lauding Jesus on Palm Sunday when he is on the crest of a wave entering Jerusalem. We hear of some of his disciples swearing their allegiance to him when all is going well, but as the week goes on and the tide of opinion changes, in the midst of derision and shame, only one remains at the foot of the cross, when all else have turned away.

He is John, the quiet one, the one of whom we hear little or nothing about, the one who remains at the back of the crowd and yet the one that Jesus loves. He is the disciple who is revealed over time, not one of those he first calls upon to join him but he is there at the end when all others have fled, for love overrides all other things, it sees beyond someone’s humiliation and shame to what lies beneath, it remains when there is nothing left to cling to but love, Good Friday love. And so it is that He is the disciple chosen to be the first to see the glory of Christ risen on that Easter morn for love believes beyond all things.

So in our living, we might take heed of how and with whom we become friends for it is the ones you least expect who will be with you on your Good Friday journey believing in you through what seems a crisis to the glory that lies beyond.