Part III, Chapter XIX
Of True Friendship
Love every one, Philothea, with a strenuous love of charity, but have no friendship, except for those that communicate with you the things of virtue: and the more exquisite the virtues are, which shall be the matter of your communications, the more perfect shall your friendship also be. If this communication be in the sciences, the friendship is certainly very commendable; but still more so if it be in the moral virtues; in prudence, discretion, fortitude, and justice. But should your reciprocal communications relate to charity, devotion, and Christian perfection, good God! how precious will this friendship be! It will be excellent, because it comes from God; excellent, because it tends to God; excellent, because its very band is God; excellent, because it shall last eternally in God. Oh, how good it is to love on earth as they love in heaven; to learn to cherish each other in this world, as we shall do eternally in the next!
I speak not here of that simple love of charity which we must have for all men; but of that spiritual friendship, by which two, three, or more souls communicate one to another their devotion and spiritual affections, and make themselves all but one spirit. Such happy souls may justly sing: “Behold how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!” (Psalms 132:1) For the delicious balm of devotion distils out of one heart into another, by so continual a participation, that it may be said that God has poured out upon this friendship “his blessing and life everlasting.” I consider all other friendships as but so many shadows in respect to this, and that their bonds are but chains of glass or of jet, in comparison of this bond of holy devotion, which is more precious than gold.
Make no other kind of friendship than this: I speak of such friends as you choose yourself; but you must not, therefore, forsake or neglect the friendships which nature or former duties oblige you to cultivate with your parents, kindred, benefactors, neighbors, and others.
Many perhaps may say: “We should have no kind of particular affection and friendship, because it occupies the heart, distracts the mind, and begets envy;” but they are mistaken, because having seen, in the writings of many devout authors, that particular friendships and extraordinary affection are of infinite prejudice to religious persons, they therefore imagine that it is the same with regard to the rest of the world; but there is a material difference; for, as in a well-ordered monastery, where the common design of all tends to true devotion, it is not requisite to make these particular communications of friendship, lest by seeking among individuals for that which is common to the whole, they should fall from particularities to partialities. But for those who dwell among worldlings, and desire to embrace true virtue, it is necessary for them to unite themselves together by a holy and sacred friendship, since by this means they encourage, assist, and conduct each other to good: for, as they that walk on plain ground need not lend each other a hand, whilst they that are in a rugged and slippery road hold one by the other, to walk more securely; so they that are in religious orders stand in no want of particular friendships; but they that are in the world have need of them, to secure and assist each other amidst the many dangerous passages through which they are to pass. In the world all are not directed by the same views, nor actuated by the same spirit; we must therefore separate ourselves, and contract friendships according to our several pretensions. This particularity causes indeed a partiality; but it is a holy partiality, which creates no other division but that which of necessity should always subsist betwixt good and evil, sheep and goats, bees and hornets.
No one surely can deny but that our Lord loved St. John, Lazarus, Martha, and Magdalen, with a more sweet and more special friendship. We know that St. Peter tenderly cherished St. Mark and St. Petronilla, as St. Paul did Timothy and St. Thecla. St. Gregory Nazianzen boasts an hundred times of the incomparable friendship he had with the Great St. Basil, and describes it in this manner: “It seemed that in us there was but one soul dwelling in two bodies, and if those are not to be believed, who say that all things are in all things, yet of us two you may believe, that we were both in each other; we had each of us one only pretension to cultivate virtue, and to accommodate all the designs of our life to future hopes; going in this manner out of mortal earth before we died in it.” St. Austin testifies that St. Ambrose loved St. Monica entirely for the real virtue he saw in her, and that she reciprocally loved him as an angel of God. But I am blamable in detaining you so long on so clear a matter. St. Jerome, St. Austin, St. Gregory, St. Bernard, and all the greatest servants of God, have had very particular friendships, without any prejudice to their perfection. St. Paul, reproaching the disorders of the gentiles, accuses them that they were people without affection; that is to say, that they had no true friendship. And St. Thomas, with all the wisest philosophers, acknowledges that friendship is a virtue; and he speaks of “particular friendship,” since, as he says, “perfect friendship cannot be extended to a great many persons.” Perfection therefore consists, not in having no friendship, but in having none but with such as are good and holy.
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