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

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Spiritual Friendship

The other was entrusted to me from his boyhood all the way to middle age, and so I chose him for friendship, and with me he ascended through all the steps of friendship, as far as human frailty in these matters permitted. It was my contemplation of his virtues that first inclined my affection toward him and I brought him from his southern home to this northern solitude and first instructed him in the regular disciplines. From that time he was a victor over the concerns of the body, and able to endure hard work and fasting; and so he was an example for nearly all, a source of admiration for many, and for me he was a glory and a delight. Already then I thought that he should be nourished in the elements of friendship, since I saw that he was a burden to nobody, but instead a delight to all. 121. He would come and go, zealously attentive to the commands of his betters, humble, mild, serious in character, rarely speaking, knowing nothing of indignation and ignorant of grumbling, rancor, and disparagement. He walked “like a deaf man; [he does] not hear, like a mute man who does not open his mouth,” he “was like a beast,” following the reins in obedience and tirelessly bearing with body and mind the yoke of regular discipline (Pss 38:13; 73:22). Once when he was yet a youth he entered the infirmary, but he was corrected by his holy father (my predecessor) for having so quickly devoted himself, while yet so young, to rest and ease; he blushed so that he soon left the infirmary, and he devoted himself so fervently to physical labor that for many years he gave himself no break from his customary rigor, even when he was urged to do so because of ill health. 122. These things made him very near to my heart in many ways, and so gave me the notion to make him, first,