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

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Spiritual Friendship

reputation, and your friend is not led by innuendo to give credence to these rumors, if he is not moved by suspicion or disturbed by any doubt, you should have no further hesitation about his faithfulness, but instead you should rejoice greatly over his sure and stable faithfulness. 67. GRATIAN: I’m thinking now of that friend of yours across the sea, whom you often mentioned to us as most tried and true, a very faithful friend, because he not only maintained his faithfulness when some were making false accusations against you, but he also was steadfast and unmoved by any doubt whatsoever—a thing you would not have thought to presume even of your best friend, the old sacristan of Clairvaux. 10 But since we have sufficiently covered the testing of a friend’s faithfulness, please go on to explain the other matters. The Test of a Friend’s Intentions (3.68−71) 68. AELRED: I said also that one must test a friend’s intent. This is quite essential, for there are very many who recognize nothing good in human affairs unless it leads to some temporal gain. Thus these people love their friends just as they love their herds of cattle—“from them they hope to get” something useful. 11 Indeed, they lack full spiritual friendship, which they ought to seek for its own sake—or rather, for God’s sake and for its own sake; they do not contemplate the natural example of love in themselves, where its “strength and quality and magnitude” can be easily comprehended. 12 10 Sacristan – a church officer who cares for the bread and wine for the Lord’s Supper, oils, relics, church decorations, and other similar items. 11 Cicero, On Friendship , 21.79. 12 Ibid., 21.80.