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

82

Spiritual Friendship

time those whom he had already begotten ( Gal 4:19 ), nourishing his brethren like a nurse ( 1 Thess 2:7 ), now correcting them like a teacher ( 2 Tim 2:25; Col 1:28 ), now fearing lest their senses be corrupted ( 2 Cor 11:3 ), now with much pain and many tears calling them to repentance ( 2 Cor 2:4 ), now mourning those who did not show repentance ( 2 Cor 12:21 ). Do you see how those who dare to eliminate such anxieties, which always accompany virtue, do not fear to remove the virtues from the world? ix 52. Did Hushai the Arkite act foolishly when he so faithfully maintained that friendship which he had with King David, that he preferred trouble to security, and would rather share the griefs of a friend than to take his ease among the joys and honors of a parricide ( 2 Sam 16:16−19; 17:5–16 )? I would say that these are not so much humans as beasts who say that one ought to live so as to be a consolation to

no one, to be a burden or a grief to no one, who derive no enjoyment from another person’s good, who would cause through their own misfortune no bitterness at all to another person, but take care to love no one, and to be loved by no one.

“I would say that these are not so much humans as beasts who . . . take care to love no one, and to be loved by no one.”

53. Far be it from me, then, to grant that any of these people really loves, if they think that friendship is something to be bought. The benefit such people confer upon their “friends” is mere lip service, because they are either hoping for some temporal benefit, or trying to make their friends their helpers in some shameful deed.