Spiritual Friendship: Learning to Be Friends with God and One Another

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Spiritual Friendship

(3.73). Finally, this chapter concludes with Aelred providing several additional principles for testing a potential spiritual friend (3.74−75). Text What Do You Do If You Discover Serious Character Flaws in a Spiritual Friend after You Have Already Chosen Them? (3.39−44) 39. WALTER: That explanation will satisfy Gratian. But I wish that you would explain to me what one should do if he has perhaps carelessly fallen into a friendship with those whom you just warned us to avoid; or, in the case of those whom you said we should choose as friends, what sort of faith should we keep with them, or what sort of favor should we show them, if they have pursued either those vices which you just mentioned or some other, worse vices? 40. AELRED: These sorts of problems should be avoided, if at all possible, in the act of choosing itself, or even in the process of testing potential friends, so that we may be sure not to form intimacies too quickly, particularly with those unworthy of such regard. xv “They are most worthy of friendship in whom there exists the reason why they should be loved.” 1 Nevertheless, even in those who are thought tested and worthy of friendship, “vices often break forth, both against their own friends, and against strangers, whose shame nevertheless redounds to their friends.” 2 We must make every effort to restrain such friends, so that they may be healed from their vices.

1 Cicero, On Friendship , 21.79. 2 Ibid.