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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refused, adding this as a caution: that our mutual love not be measured out according to some worldly comfort, and that it not be ascribed more to my fleshly affection for him than to his need, with the result that my authority would be diminished. He was therefore like my own right hand, my eye, the “staff of my old age” (Tob 5:23). He was my spirit’s resting place, a sweet comfort in times of grief; when I was tired with labors his loving heart received me, and his counsel refreshed me when I was sunk in sadness and lamentation. 127. When I was stirred up he set me at ease, and when I became angry he calmed me. Whatever sadness came I took to him, so that I could bear more easily with my shoulders joined to his the burden I could not bear by myself. What shall I say then? Is it not a certain share of blessedness so to love and be loved, so to help and be helped, and thus to fly higher, from the sweetness of brotherly Christian love to that more sublime splendor of divine love, and now to ascend the ladder of Christian love to the embrace of Christ himself, and then to descend by the same ladder

to the love of one’s neighbor, where one may sweetly rest? And so if you see something worthy of imitation in this friendship of ours, which I mentioned for the sake of an example, apply it toward your own perfection.

“Is it not a certain share of blessedness so to love and be loved, so to help and be helped?”

Final Summary and Reminder of the Goal of Spiritual Friendship (3.128−134)

128. But now the sun is setting, and so we should end this conversation of ours. Do not doubt, then, that friendship proceeds from love. Indeed, whoever does not love himself,