Many years ago, I read a wonderful series of 9 books called "My Changeless Friend" by Francis P. Le Buffe, SJ (1924).  Today, in our library at church, I ran across the series and thought that it would be wonderful to share excerpts from the books from time to time.   Unfortunately, I will be typing these word for word because there is no link for these books to just copy and paste.  But I really don't mind at all because as you will see, these are extremely uplifting and inspirational! (Just for your information, I couldn't locate book #1 so I will be starting with #2.  It really doesn't matter because they are not in any particular order anyway!)

 

Second Series 

Chapter 1

"Thou also wast with Jesus of Nazareth"   (Mark 14:67)

 

Companionship always tells on character. 

 

In the frequent intercourse with friends we are slowly but surely fashioned to their likeness and sooner or later we find the good or evil of their lives present in our own.  The loud laugh that speaks the vacant mind and the uncouth word will tell of friends with whom we have kept company - but to our shame.  If our friend has held to high ideals and kept his mind and heart pure amid the sinful ways of men, we too shall have caught some little sweet from the rich aroma of that life.  We cannot thwart the moulding influence of a constant friend.

 

Measured by this standard should we be known as the friends of Christ?  We should.  Yet if these many years of companioning with Christ have placed  us on more than speaking terms with the Man-God, would not, at least, some faint traces of His character be visible in ours?  Can we have been really friends with the choicest of friends and not have stolen a bit of the sweetness of His tenderest, yet strongest, of ways?  When we leave the circle of our daily friends or part with chance companions, does every lip instinctively murmur: "You too were with Jesus of Nazareth?"

 

At home, at work, at recreation, there must be that in my life that will make all men think of One who was most perfect of the sons of men, of One whose company we have long kept and from whom we have caught the sweet contagion of His ways.  When the restive pranks of the little ones in nursery or in classroom have thwarted our every effort for their good, the calm, unruffled manner of our ways must tell of One, who for three years bore ungrudgingly the backwardness of twelve, whom He had chosen to be His Apostles, If our lives are cast with those whose rough ways, and ruder words, vex our every moment, the gentleness of thought and word and act must speak of a Friend who in His dying pleaded for those who had nailed Him to the cross.

Sickness comes and the sharp thrust of pain snaps our puny strength.  Then it is men must know whose company we have kept.  The fullness of our resignation and the calmness of our patient suffering must tell of the Man of Sorrows, who by His agony nerved our hearts to do and to dare and trained our eyes to look beyond the shadows of this world.  In joy and in sorrow, in success and in failure, in the morning of life and as its evening hours pass noiselessly by, the strength of our selfless, saintly lives must stamp us as the friends of Christ.

 

Dear Jesus, Friend from long ago, I wonder who, from watching all my ways, would know that You had been my Friend these many years?  Of other friendships all have left deep impress - and Your own!  Is it alone without its mark?  I trust not, dearest Lord.  There is at least some faint vestige of the beauty of Your life in mine, some dim ray of light from out Your own.

Oh! Let that beauty grow, and let the likeness grow, until the happy day when I may cry:  "I live, now not I:  but Christ liveth in me."