He cometh and findeth them sleeping.  And He saith to Peter: "Simon, sleepest thou? Couldst thou not watch one hour with Me?"   Mark 14:37   Capacity for sacrifice is the measure of friendship.  Only that intimacy which has grown strong enough to forget self and suffer pain unites two hearts as friends.  Of a friend I can and do ask that which I could ask of none other, and the closer the bond the more I may ask and never hear denial.  Thus it is too with the highest and holiest friendship, that with Christ our Lord.  It is of His friends He can and does ask sacrifices.   As I kneel then before Him today, let me see how near I am to Him.  Only one question need be answered:  Am I intimate enough with Christ for Him to ask a sacrifice of of me?  As I come and kneel before Him, can He look out from behind the tabernacle door upon one from whom He knows no refusal will ever come?  Or must the Sacred Heart treat me as one beyond the circle of His dearest friends?  Must He turn from me in sorrow and heaviness of heart, as once on a time in the shadowed agony of Olivet He turned back from the sleeping forms of His weak disciples?   It may be He would ask the mother that kneels in prayer to give for "the nurseries of Heaven" the little one she suckles at her breast.  It may be He bends over the toil-worn father to ask for the gift of his well-loved boy that He may have him for Himself to stand as priest at God's altar.  Young men and women in the full powers of youth bend low in adoration, and maybe He would call them "out from all glare and glory to the shade, the shadow of the Cross, where saints are made," Out from the glamour of a passing world to the peace and other-world contentment of a cloistered home.  But are all these intimate enough to make the sacrifice?   Christ, our Lord, like any other friend, has sacrifices to ask of those who know Him, little sacrifices most of the day, big sacrifices when our love is very strong, sacrifices within the convent walls, sacrifices beside the simple hearth; and shall He feel afraid to ask me?  Few they are whom Christ may ask, and shall I make that small band smaller?   Ah!  Jesus, dearest Lord, "Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love Thee," love Thee since my day began, for other changeless Friend I have not.  Fear not then to seek a sacrifice of me, halt not in the asking for a gift that costs,  All I have and all I am has come from Thee, and little should it be to give it all for Thee.  Trust me for Thy friend;  weak, yes, and feeble, yet Thy friend;  poor indeed to give, but yet Thy friend.  Jesus, ask the gift - and it is Thine.  "My God must have my best".  I tasted all the sweets of sacrifice, I kissed my cross a thousand times a day, I hung and bled upon it in my dreams, I lived on it - I loved it to the last."