Friendship with Christ

"To the careless, reckless, thick-skinned villain he promises paradise; to the hot-booded, passionate, sensitive Magdalene he gives absolution and praises her love; and even that sinner most repulsive of all -- the deliberate, cold-hearted traitor who prefers thirty shillings to his master -- he greets even in the very moment and climax of his treachery with the tenderest title of all -- 'Friend,' says Jesus Christ, 'whereto art thou come?"

One lesson emerges, then, from the Gospel story clearly enough. We cannot know Christ in his most characteristic aspect until we find him among the sinners."

--Robert Hugh Benson, Friendship with Christ