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

Resources for Application

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his thoughts have a direct application to marriage. Aelred says that friendship in Christ is a direct path to God, not a diversion from God. . . . His thoughts about friendship have great relevance to married friends desiring a deeper relationship through spiritual conversation. 30 Imagine a Christian community where all the husbands and wives viewed their marriage as “a direct path to God, not a diversion from God.” What if they approached their marriage as an eternal friendship, one Aelred describes as “formed in Christ, advanced according to Christ, and perfected by Christ” (1.10). Married believers have a wonderful opportunity to pursue spiritual friendship with one another. Aelred’s Spiritual Friendship can offer much practical help for spouses interested in pursuing a deepened spiritual friendship together with Christ. Spiritual Friendship Deepened through Eulogies Before writing Spiritual Friendship , Aelred wrote a book about love in response to a request from his good friend Bernard of Clairvaux. In it, Aelred pauses to lament the death of his good friend, Simon. The lament runs thirteen pages in English translation, and at one-point Aelred writes: You are astonished that I am weeping; you are still more astonished that I go on living! For who would not be astonished that Aelred goes on living without Simon, except someone who does not know how sweet it was to live together, how sweet it would be to return together to the fatherland. So bear patiently with my tears, my sighs, the moaning of my heart, then. 31 30 R. Paul Stevens, Marriage Spirituality: Ten Disciplines for Couples Who Love God , Reprint edition (Vancouver, BC: Regent College Publishing, 1997), 42. 31 Mirror of Charity, 1.98−114. Aelred of Rievaulx, The Mirror of Charity, trans. Elizabeth Connor, Cistercian Fathers 17 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1990), 148.