Changeless friend

In the 1930s and 1940s one of the better known Jesuits in New York was Father Francis LeBuffe. He was a member of the staff of priests serving St. Ignatius Church on Park Avenue, but people knew him better for his series of little books of reflections on spiritual things. Because most of them were about Jesus Christ, he named the series "My Changeless Friend."

Change is a fact of life. Changeableness is a quality common to people and things. The seasons of the year change. The weather changes. Clothes new today will be old a few years from now. New cars become old and are discarded. New buildings eventually need repair or remodeling.

But most of all, men and women change. The loveable child grows up into an adult not always loveable. Strong men and women become weak old people. There is a Latin saying, "Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis." (Times change and we ourselves change in them.)

Friendships and alliances do not always remain unchanged. Your friends today may not be your friends tomorrow. Today’s allies may be tomorrow’s opponents. There is a saying that there are no permanent allies and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests. Yet even interests sometimes fluctuate. What is to the "national interest" today may be against those interests tomorrow.

One of the most fragile things is love. People deeply in love now may come to hate each other some years hence. There is a scathing verse about love by the poet Swinburne:

Love, deep as the sea, as the rose must wither,

As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose.

This changeable quality of things makes life, on the one hand interesting, on the other, tragic.

Many years ago I spent a happy summer in Shakespeare’s native town, Stratford-upon-Avon. It was a lovely little town then, hardly more than a village, with one main street and old timbered and stucco houses. At one end was the ancient stone "collegiate" church where Shakespeare had been baptized and where he was buried; at the other end was the small unpretentious Catholic Church. It was some distance from the center of town where I lived, and I walked there every morning to say Mass. A retired colonel in the British army used to serve my Mass.

There was free access to the house where Shakespeare was born and grew up, but more often I spent the afternoons in the "new" house and garden which he built when he returned a famous and wealthy playwright.

I used to take long walks from Stratford: northwards to Warwick, westwards to Gloucester to admire its medieval Gothic cathedral.

The Shakespeare memorial theatre was busy that summer, with four Shakespearean plays on its repertory. People came from far and near to see the plays.

Best of all was the river Avon and the stone bridge built in Roman times that spanned it. In the daytime, one could watch the reflection of buildings in the water, including that of the distant old church. At night, one could watch the lovely swans gliding noiselessly along the water.

Recently, after long absence I returned to Stratford. What a change! This was no longer the lovely village of former years. There were crowds of tourists and one had to stay in line and pay a fee to see the Shakespeare houses. Everything was regimented, and everything commercialized.

Everything had changed. The only one that had not changed was the old stone church. But even that had undergone vast changes. It was a Catholic Church when Shakespeare was baptized. It was a Protestant church when he was buried. Even the stained glass windows had been replaced.

In the midst of such constant mutability, it is consoling to have as a friend someone who will never change. God never changes. The Hebrew psalmist has put it splendidly:

Long ago you founded the earth,

And the heavens are the work of your hands:

They will perish but you will remain.

They will wear out like a garment.

You will change them like clothes …

But you never change nor have an end.

— Ps. 104 (ICEL)

The President of Ecuador, Gabriel Garcia Moreno, who had angered the "Liberals" and the Antireligionists by being a staunch Catholic, was shot by a gunman. "Die!" said the assassin. Garcia Moreno murmured as he fell, "Dios no muere". God never dies.

God never changes. And his Son, Jesus Christ, remains the same yesterday and today and forever. That is the point in the title of Father LeBuffe’s series of books: My Changeless Friend. Jesus the Redeemer, who died for us, is our changeless friend.