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

Chapter 5: Choosing Spiritual Friends (Book 3.1–38)

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WALTER: How could he not be a friend to me, since he denies no one his friendship? But since we are now both here, let us not be ungrateful for this leisure, nor unmindful of your promise to converse further with us.

Love Does Not Require Friendship, but Friendship Requires Love (3.2−4)

2. AELRED: Love is the source and origin of friendship, for although love can exist without friendship, friendship can never exist without love. However, love can proceed either from nature, or from duty, or from reason alone, or from affection alone, or from each of these at the same time. An example of love proceeding from nature is the love of a mother for a child. Love proceeds from duty when we are joined together by some special affection that comes after love has been offered or received for a specific reason. Love from reason alone is exemplified by the love we have for enemies, which comes not from the spontaneous inclination of our minds to love our enemies, but from our obedience to a divine precept.

Love comes from affection alone when a person attracts the affection of others to himself simply because of physical qualities which we associate with the body, for example beauty, strength, or eloquence.

“Love is the source and origin of friendship, friendship can never exist without love.”

3. Love comes simultaneously from reason and affection when someone ingratiates himself in the mind of another through the attractiveness of his character and the delight one takes in his honorable life; the mind urges us to love this person simply because of the merit of his virtue. Thus reason is joined to affection, so that love is pure