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

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Spiritual Friendship

friendship. However, if friendship ceases to exist, Solomon implies that it was never true friendship, however true it once seemed to be. 22. IVO: But why is it then that we read that serious enmity arises among the closest friends? 23. AELRED: We will discuss this more fully in its own place, God willing. Meanwhile, please do not believe that a man who was a true friend could ever harm someone whom he has once received into friendship. Moreover, neither should you believe that a man has ever tasted the delights of true friendship if he stops loving the friend he once loved, even if that friend did him some harm. For “a friend loves at all times” (Prov 17:17). 24. Even if he is corrected, even if he is hurt, even if he is handed over to be burned or is nailed to the cross, “a friend loves at all time” (Prov 17:17). Or as our own Jerome said, “Friendship which can fail was never true friendship.” 11 Is Spiritual Friendship Even Possible? (1.25−30) 25. IVO: Since there is in friendship such a great degree of perfection, it is no wonder that antiquity so rarely commended men as being true friends. For as Cicero said, “hardly three or four pairs of friends” are renowned 11 Jerome’s (d. 420) letters to his friend Augustine (d. 430) provide a helpful window into spiritual friendship. Jerome valued loyalty in friendships more than any other trait. This quotation about friendship comes from a letter he wrote to his friend Rufinus when both were young men. It reads, “A friend is long sought, hardly found, and with difficulty kept . . . the friendship which can cease has never been real” ( Letters 3.6). Jerome’s letters can be read in The Principle Works of St. Jerome , vol. 6 of NPNF2, available at www.ccel.org.