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

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

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the two that you would like for your two spirits to become one.” 1 You might say that “you entrust yourself to him as to another self”; you hide nothing from your friend, and “from your friend you fear nothing.” 2 Since this is so, you first choose someone whom you think to be conformable to these qualities, and then you test this person, and only then do you admit him to your friendship. “For friendship ought to be stable,” and to offer a certain prospect of eternity, persevering in affection. 3 7. So also “we ought not to change our friends in a childish manner, following some unsettled notion.” 4 For since there is no more hateful person than he who offends against a friendship, and nothing torments the spirit more than to be deserted or attacked by a friend, a friend must therefore be chosen with the utmost zeal and tested with the greatest caution. However, once a friend has been accepted, he must be so tolerated, treated, and agreed with that, as long as he has not permanently departed from that foundation of friendship which we have agreed on, he will belong to you and you to him, as much in temporal as in spiritual matters, so that there will be no differences between you on affairs of the soul, the affections, your wills and opinions.

1 Ambrose, On the Duties of the Clergy, 3.134. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., 3.128. 4 Ibid.