“It is with the same greeting that, on the evening of Easter, the Risen Lord addressed his disciples, afraid and locked in the Upper Room: ‘Peace be with you,’ that I greet you today. It is not a formula of courtesy, but the certain proclamation of Christ’s victory over death,” – this is how Pope Leo XIV greeted the Ministers General and opened the Conference of the Franciscan Family on January 10th of 2026. It is with this spirit of peace, and the necessary renewal found in all peace, as conflicts resolve and friendships are reborn, that we find ourselves during this Lenten Season.
Father Chris explains, “As we enter the season of Lent, the concept that I have about this Lent and Easter is using the experience of friendship, and the renewal of that connection, as a ‘theme’.” After attending several seminars on ministering to young people, he has come to realize that ‘friendship’ is the common denominator of a truly balanced life, but ‘friendship’ is precisely where many people struggle. “Having very close and deep friends is difficult for many,” he says, adding, “and men struggle the worst, but our young people also find difficulty.”
“If we took a look at what we have in Lent, and think about our own friendship in Christ, our own experience of friendship with Jesus,” he says, “you have a model of friendship to use.” Father Chris points out that, because we’re part of the ‘after-resurrection Christian movement,’ we know we have a friend, Jesus, who’s going away. Like any friend who’s going away, as often happens in life when a friend is moving, facing a challenge, getting a diagnosis, or shifting jobs, there is a call to be closer. A need to spend time with that friend.”
Father Chris compares it to parents whose child is in their final semester of high school. “It’s their last semester, and their child is so busy with their own stuff, but the parents know they’re getting ready to move out and be on their own at college or in the world.” Comparing this experience to Jesus during Lent, as a friend who will always be present with us, he says it is a similar feeling to what those parents experience, albeit on a larger scale. “Lent is this opportunity for us to pull closer to someone before you know they are leaving, as the disciples did when Jesus returned to them and found them as they hid in that room.” Lent can be that surprise reunion with a long-time friend, a chance to renew the relationship. “Imagine,” he says, “that you have a friend who has moved away and then you see them unexpectedly back in town. There’s this experience of rekindling of the friendship, but you know there’s going to be a separation when the friend leaves again.”
Of course, Jesus never really does travel back and forth. Jesus is always there in your heart, just like a close friend is, even when he or they are not around ’in person.’ Lent is just the time to renew that friendship and experience that closeness of a relationship, just as you feel when a friend returns. To paraphrase Pope Benedict XVI, “As Christians participating in this preparation for Easter, we are reviving the memory of the Sacrament of the Eucharist we all have received. We reunite in renewed communion with Christ, made available through the joyful celebration of Easter. Thus, Lent … helps keep alive the awareness that being Christians is always achieved by becoming Christians over and over again: it is never a story that is over once and for all but rather a journey which requires us to start constantly anew.”
This journey of ‘starting anew’ is what we experience each Lent. As Father Chris analogizes, each year we renew our friendship with Christ as we remember and celebrate Easter. It is the reunion of old friends. “For me,” he says, “my experience is that it’s a friendship because you’re carrying them with you all day. Jesus comes to us in this mysterious manner, as friends do. Jesus isn’t somebody that we order on Amazon. There has to be a connection, a relationship. Like any relationship, we invest in it.” He points out that if you ‘pull up friendship’ in the catechism, it’s not going down the same road that this theme would be. “We just did the priest assembly in Wrightsville Beach, and we discussed how faith formation should switch to a model like Tim (Hetzel, the Director of Youth and Young Adult Ministry) is doing, this ‘encounter with Christ.’”
“Everybody says ‘encounter with Christ.’ Well, what is that?” asks Father Chris. “Is it the encounter with ‘Christ your Lord?’ Is he already automatically your Lord before he’s a friend? You have to know him first. I see it as the connection, as if you are meeting someone who’s trying to explain what life is to you. As if you met somebody who had some similar traits and you said to yourself, ‘You know, I’d like to keep exploring and talking over lunches or dinners about really understanding this life we have. Because that’s a closer friend, right? Those deep conversations only happen when there is a friendship and a curiosity about the other person.”
“Some of this, I guess,” he adds, “gets cut up in this mix of humanity and divinity, but his humanity is asking you to follow his life story. There’s struggle in there, and there’s joy in there; the same things we go through.” This friendship we are discussing and trying to open up with Jesus is a difficult concept because of the mix of the human and the divine. “But there were these connections that Jesus formed,” Father Chris says, “these friendships Jesus had, with people in his life.” Of course, people think of the disciples, but Jesus had other relationships, too. Father Chris points to Lazarus. “I would look at some of the Lazarus notations, maybe read through those stories during Lent to think about how this friendship was out there. Lazarus had a friendship with Jesus. Jesus needed friends, as we all do. He is that friend for all of us, as he was with Lazarus.”
Father Chris encourages people to come to Stations of the Cross during Lent, held every Friday, including Good Friday. While the stations show the end of his time as a human on Earth, they highlight the supremacy of his love for us and his friendship with us all. As John 15:12-15 finds Jesus saying, “…love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.”
Renew that friendship with Jesus this Lenten season; like all good friends, Jesus is ready to hear from you again. Make this Lent a time of reunion and reconnection with Christ.
