Dear Readers,

“I will call you my friends” (Jn. 15:15).

Man has been created in the image and likeness of God, one in Three Divine Persons, and these Three are related between themselves by knowledge and love.

It is therefore deeply rooted in man’s heart to seek the knowledge and the love of others. This desire has a divine origin, and thus is stronger than death.

One who, in our very days, can abundantly testify to this, with the most difficult cases—apparently so difficult that even Pope Francis admitted publicly that there were no answers, although there are—is a modern-day Don Bosco, a young priest called Fr. Matthew Dauchez. Father Dauchez has been working with abandoned children roaming the slums and the public dump of Manila for about two decades. He has now 13 centers, sheltering more than 1,300 kids wounded by every kind of abuse. In his book Begging for Love, Father Dauchez shows with heart-rending stories that the deepest need in a human heart is, indeed, the need of a friend.

When the volunteers meet the children at night, on the street, the question which draws them in is not: “Are you hungry, sick?” or “Do you need a home?” It is rather: “Do you want to be my friend?” Remember, many of these children have received all sorts of abuse from relatives, and many under ten years old have run away from home.

And when, having been accepted at the Foundation, they discover and accept the mercy and grace of God, they will infallibly seek to share their newly discovered happiness with their family, regardless of the past offenses, like this 12-year-old boy who made the following night prayer in front of the other children: “I would like to say that, despite all my mum did to me—and I do not know why—I still love her.”

When the love of God enters a human heart, it divinizes it. These children have truly become “merciful as their heavenly Father.” Let us “become like unto them” and we too “shall obtain mercy” and become the friends of God.

Fr. Daniel Couture