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

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Spiritual Friendship

person who attains them uses them well, and no one abuses them absolutely. 62. IVO: But I must ask, don’t many people abuse wisdom, who desire to please men from it, or who are overweening in their pride in the wisdom with which they have been endowed, or surely they abuse wisdom who consider it a thing for sale, and think righteousness a commodity to be bought? 63. AELRED: In this matter you will be satisfied with what Augustine said: “He who takes pleasure in himself, takes pleasure in a fool; for he is indeed a fool who pleases himself.” 13 Truly he who is a fool is unwise, and he who is unwise, is unwise by virtue of not having wisdom at all. How therefore does one who has no wisdom use it badly? So also chastity that is prideful cannot be considered a virtue, for pride itself, which is a fault, makes that which is considered a virtue conform to itself, so that that which was previously a virtue is turned into a vice. 64. IVO: But—and I speak with your indulgence—it does not seem to me to follow, when you link wisdom to friendship, since there is no comparison between the two of them. 65. AELRED: Even though degrees of comparison, like “smaller” and “larger,” or “good” and “better,” or “weaker” and “stronger,” are not equivalent, still in the matter of virtues such degrees of comparison are often quite closely connected; that is, things which differ from each other

13 Aelred appears to be quoting from one of Augustine’s sermons. Today more than 540 of Augustine’s sermons have survived and continue to be read with profit.