The Holy Father also drew on the human experience of friendship to warn about the dangers of neglecting one’s spiritual life: “Our experience tells us that friendships can come to an end through a dramatic gesture of rupture, or because of a series of daily acts of neglect that erode the relationship until it is lost.”
“If Jesus calls us to be friends, let us not leave this call unheeded. Let us welcome it, let us take care of this relationship, and we will discover that friendship with God is our salvation,” he said.
The pope insisted that this living relationship with God is cultivated above all through prayer, understood as an authentic friendship with the Lord.
This experience, he explained, is achieved first of all in liturgical and community prayer, “in which we do not decide what to hear from the Word of God, but it is he himself who speaks to us through the Church.” It is also achieved in personal prayer, which takes place “in the interiority of the heart and mind,” and which should form part of every believer’s day and week.
‘Only when we speak with God can we also speak about him’
The pontiff stressed that only from a personal relationship with God is it possible to bear authentic witness to the faith: “Only when we speak with God can we also speak about him.”
Referring to the dogmatic constitution Dei Verbum, promulgated by St. Paul VI in 1965, Leo emphasized that Christian revelation is grounded in a living and personal dialogue between God and humanity. Through this dialogue, God reveals himself as an ally who invites each person into a true relationship of friendship.
The pope noted that divine revelation has a profoundly dialogical character, proper to the experience of friendship: It does not tolerate silence but is nourished by the exchange of true words capable of creating communion.
Leo XIV also distinguished between “words” and “chatter,” explaining that the latter remains on the surface and does not create authentic relationships. In genuine relationships, he said, words do not serve merely to exchange information but to reveal who we are and to establish a deep bond with the other.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA's Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
