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

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

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a partner instead of an inferior, then a friend instead of a partner, and finally a very close friend indeed. For when I saw that he had come into the first rank of those marked by virtue and grace, on the advice of the brothers I imposed upon him the burden of the subpriorship. 16 Although he was quite unwilling to accept this post, he modestly undertook it because he had devoted himself to total obedience. Still, he asked me many times, when we were alone, to be relieved of the position, offering as his excuse his age, his lack of knowledge, and the friendship, which we had begun, lest by chance this office become the occasion for our mutual love to diminish. 123. But he got nowhere with these excuses, and so he began to speak openly and freely (though humbly and modestly) with me about the things that he feared for each one of us, and about things in me that he was less than pleased with. He was hoping, as he later confessed to me, that I would be offended by his presumption and so be the more inclined to grant him that which he was seeking—relief from the burden of authority. But this freedom with which he spoke his mind only added to the sum of our friendship, and I wanted him for a friend no less than before. Then, perceiving that I looked with favor upon what he said, and that I had answered each of his points in humility and dealt with them all to his satisfaction, he saw that he himself had not only garnered no ill will from his free speech but had even reaped more abundant fruit; therefore he began to love me more warmly than he himself used to, to “loosen the reins” of his affection,

16 Subprior – the assistant to the monastery prior, a leader in the religious community.