Written by Father Michael
A few days ago I heard that some august association of wordsmiths elected the word unfriend as their new word of the year. Wait a second as I add it to my on-line dictionary, that’s all it takes with word processing to add it to your dictionary. The word is highlighted and a box appears with suggested spellings or a box to check “ignore” or “add to dictionary”. Check, and there it is, official, in my dictionary, unfriend. But what does it mean?
Once some kids signed me up on Facebook but I found it too time consuming to pursue. The object of Facebook seemed to be how many friends you can list. You collect friends like I collected baseball cards as a kid and my champion was my aunt. She was a “fanatic” fan and a nun at a boy’s school. The way to earn her friendship was to supply her with baseball cards, they were more precious than holy cards. She had shoeboxes full of cards, all indexed. Her only real possessions. But her relations with her suppliers were more like friendships than the “friends” on Facebook. Actually Winifred (Sr. Anna Winifred, SND) traded cards and discussed baseball. Her suppliers were friends.
I have an Instant Messenger account and my Contacts seemed more realistically named. Contacts are that “contacts” not necessarily Friends. If I deleted a contact I was not “unfriending” them. I was not discarding a treasure. I have stopped using Messenger but I keep the account open sometimes. It is easier than a phone call. I did not find it necessary to share my day with my contacts whenever they appeared on-line.
There is a song about what a friend we have in Jesus. It is that sense of friendship that I treasure the word “friend.” To “unfriend” seems so harsh, so cruel. I do not like to hear the word “friend” used so casually. We read in Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 25:34-40:
"Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you took me in, naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” Then the righteous will answer and say “Lord, when did we see you hungry and we gave you nourishment, or thirsty and we gave you drink? When did we see a stranger and we took you in, or naked and we clothed you? When did we see you sick or in prison and we came to you?” The king will answer and say to them: “Amen I say to you, as long as you did it for ONE of these least of my brothers you did it for me.”
Jesus calls us to live a life of friendship, of seeing Christ in all. It seems we live our lives as unfriends. We are surrounded by people, we even have an address book, contact list, or Facebook page full of names but are they friends? Jesus says in the “least of our brethren” we should see Him. He does not ask us to do acts of charity, give to faceless organizations that shelter us from the “least of our brethren.” Jesus asks us to be friends with those who need us. Jesus wants us to be involved. For some of us that may mean to visit and work with poor, to go to prisons. But to some of us it may mean just to open our eyes to the people in need around us. To lend an ear to one who needs someone to listen to them. It means getting involved, maybe even getting hurt, or exposing our own vulnerability. Unfriend is a way most live their life, being Christian means to be a friend, to be involved. Maybe it is more like trading baseball cards, it is what helped win Winifred an award at seventy because she could relate to intercity young men and job train them in maintenance. She had something in common with them, baseball and seeing Christ in each other. She walked the streets of Hamilton, Ohio, seeing only Christians and the grocer gave her a six pack of beer with every bag of groceries.