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

138

Spiritual Friendship

Friendship Is the Spice of Life, but Beware of Poisons (3.88−89)

88. But now it is time for us to examine how friendship is to be cultivated. “Faithfulness, then, is the foundation of stability and constancy in friendship: for there is nothing stable which is faithless.” 3 Therefore in their mutual relationships, friends ought to be simple, courteous, and agreeable; xxiii moreover, they ought to be such as to be moved by these qualities in others. Now, all these qualities have to do with faithfulness, for the temperament that is characterized by faith cannot be devious and crafty. Nor can those who are unmoved by the same qualities or who disagree about these qualities be stable or faithful to each other. 89. However, we must avoid suspicion before all else—it is poison to a friendship—so that we never harbor evil thoughts about a friend, nor give credence to or go along with someone who makes slanderous remarks about our friend. At this point in our conversation I should deal with agreeableness, cheerfulness in expression, attractiveness of personality, the peacefulness one finds even in a glance—all of these are no little part of what makes friendship the spice of life. For a sober and rather grave facial expression has a certain honorable dignity, to be sure, but sometimes “friendship ought to be a little loose,” as it were, and “freer and more pleasant, more prone to fellowship and ease” though without flightiness and license. 4

3 Cicero, On Friendship , 18.65. 4 Ibid., 18.66.