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

Chapter 7: Accepting and Enjoying Spiritual Friends (Book 3.76–97)

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friends with uneasy hearts, and to welcome returning friends with joy. 86. By these and by other signs of this sort, proceeding from the hearts of those who love and love in return, by facial expressions, by words, by glances of the eyes and a thousand other pleasing gestures, as though to fuse the souls of friends together over a fire, and to make of many one: this is what we think should be loved in friends, to the end that it appears our consciences stand condemned if we fail to give and receive love mutually ( 1 John 4:11 ). 87. AELRED: This is fleshly friendship, the sort that is most common among the young, which is what Augustine and his friend were at the time of which he was speaking. 2 Still, with the exception of its trifles and its falsehoods, and if there is in it nothing dishonorable, we must tolerate this type of friendship in the hope of some more abundant grace, as if it were the beginnings of a holier type of friendship. By these beginnings, and with the growth of religious feeling and equality of the spiritual zeal shown by friends, also with the seriousness that increases with age, and with the illumination of their spiritual sensibilities, with a purer affection they may ascend to higher things, as though leaving behind their old familiar haunts. It is as we said yesterday, that one can make a rather easy transition from human friendship to friendship with God himself, because of the similarity between the two.

2 Fleshly friendships were discussed during the first conversation; see Chapter 2 (1.38−41).