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

Chapter 4: The Advantages and Excellence of Spiritual Friendship (Book 2.28–72)

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“Business Friendships” Are Not the Same as Spiritual Friendship (2.60−63) 60. There is also the friendship which is begun with a thought to some practical usefulness, which many people think a proper reason for a friendship to be sought, nourished and preserved. But if we grant this, how many of the most worthy people do we exclude from love of every sort! I mean those who own nothing, who have no possessions; those who think that friendship should have some practical benefit will not be able either to gain or to hope for some temporal benefit from those who are impoverished. 61. If indeed you would classify advice in doubt, consolation in adversity, and other things of this sort as “practical benefits,” these things also are to be expected from a friend, but they ought to follow friendship, rather than precede it. For one who seeks from friendship some profit other than friendship itself has not yet learned what friendship is. Friendship will be full of riches for those who cherish it when it is completely centered upon God; for those whom friendship joins together, it immerses in the contemplation of God. 11 62. For although a faithful friendship between good people produces “many great benefits,” I have no doubt that the benefits come from the friendship, rather than

11 Contemplation – “the core of the Christian life . . . the human counterpart to God’s self-giving grace that is an openness to God’s work in the Spirit, binding us to the life of Christ, that forms our fundamental posture of presenting ourselves to God.” John Coe and Kyle Strobel, eds., Embracing Contemplation: Reclaiming a Christian Spiritual Practice (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2019), 9.