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

Chapter 8: Giving and Receiving between Spiritual Friends (Book 3.97–134)

151

can render aid to each other. The first benefit is that friends are concerned for each other, pray for each other, one blushes for the other, another rejoices for the other, one mourns the fall of the other as he would his own, another regards the advantage of the other as his own ( Rom 12:15 ). 102. A friend uses whatever means he can to encourage the timid, strengthen the weak, console the sad, and check the enraged ( Rom 12:15; 1 Cor 9:22; 1 Thess 5:14 ). Besides, one ought to have such regard for the eyes of his friends, that he dares to do nothing which is not honorable, to say nothing which is unbecoming. xxiv For the matters in which he fails taint his friends also, so that not only the sinner himself blushes and grieves within himself, but also the friend who sees or hears the sin blames himself as though he himself had sinned. Therefore, the friend thinks that not he himself, but the sinner, should be spared. And so respect xxv is the best companion of friendship, and for that reason “he who deprives friendship of respect takes away its greatest ornament.” 5 103. How often a mere nod from my friend either stifled or stopped completely the anger which had flamed up in my heart and begun to break forth into public view! How many times did his stern gaze prevent me from uttering the unbecoming word that was already on the tip of my tongue! How often, when I had quite carelessly fallen into raucous laughter or into idleness, did I recover a fitting dignity when my friend entered the room! Moreover, whenever we must be convinced of a course of action, we are quite easily and securely persuaded by friends,

5 Cicero, On Friendship , 25.91.