Can Catholics Have a Personal Relationship with Jesus?

The short answer is "yes". However, to understand how Catholics have a personal relationship with Jesus, you have to define the term more carefully.
   A personal relationship is not necessarily with another individual person.  It could be with a group, like a family, a group of close friends, people we live with or work with in a dorm or an office.  The important thing about a personal relationship is that it has a personal affect on us -- it engages us as a person, or in a personal way; in other words, it touches our hearts and minds -- it affects us. 
   This is important because strictly speaking Jesus is not exactly just another person.  Jesus is God (the Son of God) who appeared on earth as a human individual much like any other human person.  The disciples knew him as a human person, and only gradually understood that he was both human-and-divine (the so-called hypostatic union, officially defined at the Council of Chalcedon in 451).  Catholics believe that Jesus died, was raised, and ascended into heaven but continues to be present among us.  However, it is clear, especially in John's Gospel, that Jesus is present in a way which is different from how he was present to the disciples during his time on earth.  He himself promised to be present to us in his Spirit, which is to say in his divine nature, and present "where two or three are gathered", which is to say in the communion of believers which Catholic Christians call "the Body of Christ" or "the Mystical Body." 
   Our relationship to Jesus, then, is to the divine person present or mediated through the Body of Christ, the Church.  This is a real relationship, and it is personal, but it is different from the kind of relationship the first disciples may have had with Jesus, the Son of God present in the human person of Jesus.  It is also different from the way in which many non-Catholic Christians define a  "personal relationship" with Jesus, which by and large precedes and is independent from the communion of believers. 

Learn More
> Pope Francis's address on having a personal relationship with Jesus.
> Catechism of the Catholic Church #1373ff
> Reflections on the Eucharist
> "It Is Your Face O Lord That I Seek"
> "Knowing Jesus Personally" Bishop Robert Barron/video
 

Last Update: 06.03.21