INTRODUCTION TO THE DEVOUT LIFE

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PART III, Chapter 19: Genuine Friendships

Philothea, love everyone with a great love of charity but have friendship with those capable of communicating virtuous things to you. The more exquisite the virtue you put in your exchange the more perfect will your friendship be. If you share knowledge, you friendship is indeed very praiseworthy; more so, if you communicate virtues, prudence, discretion, fortitude and justice. If your mutual and reciprocal exchange is about charity, devotion, Christian perfection, precious indeed will your friendship be. It will be excellent because it comes from God, excellent because it tends to God, excellent because its bond is God, excellent because it will last eternally in God. How good it is to love on earth as one loves in Heaven, and to learn to cherish one another in this world as we shall do eternally in the next!

I do not speak here about the simple love of charity for it ought to embrace all men. But I speak of the spiritual friendship by which two or three or more persons communicate among themselves their devotion, their spiritual affection and become one in spirit. With good reason such happy souls can sing: How good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together (Ps. 133:1). Yes, this delicious balm of devotion distils from one heart to another, by a continual sharing, so that we may say that God has poured out his blessing and life on this friendship for ever and ever (Ps. 133:3).

In my opinion, all other friendships are only shadows compared to this. Their bonds are only chains of glass and jet[1] in comparison with this great bond of holy devotion which is entirely of gold. Do not form friendships of any other kind – I mean friendships which you make. On account of this, you are not to abandon or despise the friendships which nature and earlier duties oblige you to cultivate towards relations, kindred, benefactors, neighbours and others. I now speak of those friendships which you yourself choose.

Perhaps many people may tell you that you should not have any kind of special affection and friendship since it occupies the heart, distracts the mind and creates jealousies. But they err in their advice. For they have found in the writings of many saints and devout authors that particular friendships and excessive affections do very great harm to the religious. They think that in itself it is the same for all other persons. But there is much to be said about this.

It is understood that in a well-ordered monastery, the common purpose of all tends to true devotion. So it is not required to make these particular communications there, due to the fear of seeking in particular what is common and of passing from particularities to partialities.

But it is necessary that those who live among worldly people and embrace true devotion join together in a holy and sacred friendship. By this means they encourage, assist and support themselves well.

Just as those who walk on level ground do not need a helping hand, but those who are on a dangerous and slipper path support one another to walk more safely, so too those who are religious do not need particular friendships.[2]

But those who are in the world do need them, to save themselves and help one another, in the midst of so many difficult paths they have to cross. In the world, all do not strive for the same end, all do not have the same spirit. Hence, without doubt, t is necessary to draw oneself aside and form friendships according to our aim. This particularity in indeed a partiality but a holy partiality, which does not cause any division except between good and evil, between sheep and goats, and between bees and hornets – a necessary separation.

Indeed, no one can deny that our Lord loved with a very tender and special friendship St. John, Lazarus, Martha and Magdalen as Scripture bears witness. We know that St. Peter loved tenderly St. Mark and St. Petronilla, as St. Paul did St. Timothy and St. Thecla. St. Gregory Nazianzen boasts of his exceptional friendship with the great St. Basil a hundred times and describes it in this manner:

It seemed that in both of us there was only one single soul dwelling in two bodies. Though we do not believe those who say that all things are in all things, yet you must believe that we were both in each one of us and each in the other. Both of us had only one single aim to practise virtue and to adapt all the aims of our life to future hopes, thus going out of this mortal world before dying in it.

St. Augustine testifies that St. Ambrose loved singularly St. Monica because of the rare virtue he saw in her, and in turn she loved him as an Angel of God.

I may be wrong in detaining you on so clear a topic. St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St. Gregory, St. Bernard, and all the greatest servants of God, had very special friendships without prejudice to their perfection. St. Paul reproaching the disorders of the gentiles accuses them of being people without affection (Rom. 1:31), that is to say, those who did not have any friendships. St. Thomas like all the good philosophers declares that friendship is a virtue. Then he speaks about particular friendship because, as he says, perfect friendship cannot be extended to many persons. Thus, perfection does not consist in having no friendship at all but in having only that which is good, holy and sacred.

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[1] A hard black mineral used for ornaments.

[2] There is a difference between “necessary”, “useful” and “forbidden”. Something “necessary” implies a need, while something “useful” need not be necessary. St. Francis says that friendship is not necessary for religious. According to him, the religious community itself must be an expression and a witness of the highest form of friendship and sharing (Spiritual Conferences – IV: On Cordiality, Annecy Edition, Vol. 6, pp. 55-70).

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