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

Chapter 3: The Advantages and Excellence of Spiritual Friendship (Book 2.1–27)

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friend, nor should the one note the other for having been praised and censure him for adulation. 12. “Faithful friends,” said the Wise Man, “are life-saving medicine” (Sir 6:16). And this is quite the case. For medicine is no more healthy or effective or excellent for our bodily wounds, than it is for us to have a friend who shows compassion to our every misfortune and shares our joy in every good thing. According to the Apostle, such friends bear one another’s burdens, shoulder to shoulder with each other ( Gal 6:2 )—except that each one bears his own injuries more lightly than those of his friend. 13. So friendship “makes favorable circumstances even more splendid, and adverse circumstances more bearable by sharing them.” 5 Therefore a friend is the best “life saving medicine” (Sir 6:16). And even the Gentiles agreed with this sentiment: “We depend on fire and water no more than we depend on friends.” 6 In every act, in every pursuit; in certainty and in doubt; in every event, whatever fortune brings; in private and in public; in every deliberation, at home and in the world: friendship is everywhere welcome, friends are necessary, and their favor is always found to be useful. And so friends, as Cicero says, are there for each other “even when they are absent, are rich even when they are needy, and strong even when they are weak; and—though it is rather difficult to put into words—they live on even after they have died” (Sir 6:16). 7 5 Cicero, On Friendship , 6.22. 6 Ibid. 7 Aelred quotes from Sir 6:16 and Cicero ( On Friendship , 6:22−23) to show that friendship is essential to a good life.