In the time of Jesus, Bethany was only three kilometers from Jerusalem and served as a place of rest for those coming from Jericho. Today, the road interrupted by the separation wall no longer passes through Bethany, and the route has become much longer. One must go to Bethany. But above all, one must spend time in Bethany. I underline this because Bethany is the universal point of reference for all who desire to know more about friendship
Jesus and Lazarus
Sometimes, facts—through sheer familiarity—lose their vitality: they turn into clichés incapable of yielding anything more. To visit the Holy Places calmly is to allow the still image to come alive, and to savor, as one more character within it, the hidden sap pulsing through the depths of the narrative.
In Bethany, at the home of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus—three siblings who were friends of Jesus—some of the most beautiful and intense episodes recorded in the Gospels took place. Yet what shines as the underlying light illuminating everything is their deep and tender friendship with Jesus.
Friendship is, in a certain way, a shared biography that is gradually interwoven over time. Friendship is mutual, but not necessarily symmetrical. Dialogues and silences are shared; gestures; trivial or important events; laughter and tears; work and rest; successes and failures… in an atmosphere of trust, without filters. Friendship is born and grows. It becomes.
There are friends from childhood, from adolescence, from early and later youth, from old age; friends of friends; friends who perhaps once were enemies; friends from the right and from the left; friends who become so unexpectedly…. There are friendships that endure through time and others that fade into a memory but are never forgotten! — because friendship is the foundation upon which every true love takes root and grows: the love of spouses, of parents and children, of brothers and sisters.
– “You know?” – said an elderly man to the daughter of a friend of his who was not there at the time, when she came to give him condolences for the death of his wife, – “your father is the friend I love the most.” The girl looked at him, deeply moved. – “Yes, the one I love the most!” – he repeated. “Not the friend with whom I best get along, or the one I am closest to – he insisted – he is the one I love the most.” “Don’t tell him though… “– “well” he rectified – “it’s no problem if you do tell him, because he already knows it.”
Jesus and his friends, the apostles
I took note. Friendship is like this: a relationship matured between people who love each other just as they are. The friend is always there, even when he is not present. The friend has a sixth sense for making himself present when he is needed. His presence is always appreciated, and when he is absent, he is deeply missed. Martha and Mary longed for Jesus’s company when Lazarus fell ill, and both of them complained. Jesus wept with them for their dead friend. And He wanted to see him. “Lord, by now there will be a stench,” they told Him, “he has been dead for four days.” But He insisted. And they believed in His power: the power of love, the power of God. Jesus called him by name with the strong voice of a friend, and Lazarus rose again. “And” adds Saint Josemaría Escrivá, “he loves you as much as he loved Lazarus” (The Way 422)
By Carmen Rodríguez Éyre