By: Bishop Michael C. Barber, SJ
On Oct. 18, 2025, eight Jesuits from the United States, along with four other Jesuits, were ordained deacons at the Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland by Bishop Michael C. Barber, SJ. In his homily, Bishop Barber reflected on the universality of our faith and how Catholics are committed to one another through our common faith, regardless of nationality.
“You are my friends if you do what I command you.”
(Jn 15:14)
“You are my friends:” I hope you can hear Our Lord saying that to each one of you today. “You are my friend.”
Christ spoke these words to his apostles at the Last Supper. To the apostles, perhaps, everything looked peaceful and beautiful. But Our Lord could sense his pending arrest, torture and death by crucifixion.
So he wanted to reassure them of His closeness and remind them of His friendship.
I imagine it must have been the same for some of the Jesuit saints.
St. Isaac Jogues
In 1636, after a joyful and peaceful ordination in France, Isaac Jogues got on a ship to Canada, knowing he was headed toward possible capture and martyrdom. He did it because he could hear the Lord tell him, “You are my friend.”
St. Edmund Campion
Having been the most brilliant student at Oxford, then an Anglican-deacon, Edmund Campion was chosen to compose and deliver the official welcoming address when Queen Elizabeth I visited the university. But then he left England for the continent, converted to Catholicism, joined the Society of Jesus and was ordained. He then returned to England, ministering underground. Eventually he was betrayed, arrested, convicted – and then hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn.
He did it because he could hear the Lord say to him, “You are my friend.”
Father Claude de la Colombiere and Sister Margaret Mary Alacoque
And then there was Jesuit Father Claude de la Colombiere. Assigned as rector of the Jesuit college (high school) in Paray-le-Monial, France, one of his collateral duties was serving as extraordinary confessor to the Visitation nuns. When he made his first visit to the convent, the mother superior introduced him to the community, and one of the nuns, Sister Margaret Mary Alacoque, heard Christ say to her: “He is the one I sent you.”
Christ had been appearing to Sr. Margaret Mary and revealing to her the “riches of His Sacred Heart.” Her superior was skeptical. But Christ reassured the young nun, “I will send my faithful servant and perfect friend.”
She told Father Claude, “You are His faithful servant, and perfect friend.” (I hope people can say that about us.)
The First Ordination
At the first ordination – the Last Supper – Jesus called us to be his friends. Friendship with Christ is our greatest treasure.
It is the pearl of great price for which we are willing to sacrifice everything else.
Our friendship with the Lord is cultivated by a life of prayer and service.
We can survive as deacons, priests, (and lay Catholics) only if we embrace a life of friendship; friendship with Christ; friendship with our brothers in the priesthood and our religious order; and friendship with the people we serve.
At the first ordination ceremony Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” This is what Jesus is asking us in the new commandment where he says, “Love one another, as I love you.”
Here’s one final example of a man’s friendship with Christ, his brothers in the priesthood, and the faithful he served.
On Nov. 1, St. John Henry Newman was declared a doctor of the Church by Pope Leo XIV. In 1852, long before he was a cardinal, Father Newman was falsely accused of libel, was tried, found guilty, and barely escaped a prison sentence. The judge and jury were vehemently anti-Catholic and refused to let Newman’s witnesses testify in his defense. The Times newspaper in London wrote, “It is clear there is no justice for Catholics in England.”
Newman had to pay a fine, and even worse, lawyer’s fees, which were over $1,500,000 in today’s money. He was a modest parish priest serving a poor neighborhood in Birmingham.
But he was a friend of Jesus Christ. And a defender of Christ’s Catholic Church. Christ had many such friends in England.
All the faithful Catholics of England, who looked up to Newman as the most intelligent and capable spokesman for the Catholic Church in England, came to his aid. Collections were voluntarily taken up in parishes. Children in Catholic schools donated their pennies. Donations came in from Belgium, France and other Catholic countries on the continent.
And in 1853, here in distant California, in the midst of the Gold Rush, hearing of the verdict against Newman, the priests of the Archdiocese of San Francisco and religious orders donated personal funds. Archbishop Joseph Alemany, a Dominican, met with Jesuit Father Michael Accolti, who had founded the University of Santa Clara just two years prior in 1851. He asked Accolti to go to Birmingham, England, and personally deliver their gift.
There was no transcontinental railroad. There was no Panama Canal. It took Father Accolti two and a half months to make the sea journey around the southern end of South America to New York and then across the Atlantic, to Great Britain. Arriving in Birmingham on New Year’s Eve 1853, he met with Father Newman and presented him with a giant gold nugget weighing 17 ounces, fashioned into a ring. On the ring were these words in Latin: “To the Rev Dr. J. H. Newman, defender of the True Faith, from the Catholics of California.”
Newman was stunned and very much touched that a Jesuit priest had made this long journey with such a heartfelt gift.
In great gratitude, Newman wrote to Archbishop Alemany, including these words:
“…many and dear to me as have been the proofs given me during my late anxieties that one heart and but one beats all through the Catholic Church, there needed but this, to make a present from California the most striking instance of all.…”
Only one heart beats all through the Catholic Church. May we all experience the friendship of Christ, directly from Him in our prayer and adoration … through the people we faithfully serve.
“You are my friends.”