Chastity and Friendship

I found this article very interesting... enjoy! It is a little lengthy I suppose, but I found it worth the time to read.

Chastity and Friendship

Chastity is able to blossom when friendship is present. Friendship is a great good that leads to spiritual communion (CCC 2347). Friendship is something that continues forever, just as chastity is a promise of immortality. Friendship is essential in good relationships, and especially in marriage. Jesus called us friends because he made known to us everything that he heard from his father (John 15:15). Sharing, intimacy, and trust are ingredients of a true friendship. Friendship extends further than the sharing of common pursuits. In this article, Augustine’s views on Christian friendship are reflected upon.

Augustine believed that Christian friendship was “rightly and with just reverence defined as ‘agreement on things human and divine combined with good will and love’” (contra acad II, VI, 13). A prerequisite for friendship is that people must be friends with themselves. He also said if they do not love God they are their own enemies and incapable of friendship (Ep 258). He saw friendship as sympathy for one who is aspiring toward God, something which continues and helps him to grow in the love of God (Sol. 7, 20, 22).

Friendship is active and progresses, becoming more perfect as friends draw nearer to God. Its fruitfulness is the measure of intensity (Sol. 1, 22). So Augustine arrived at a clear understanding of Christian friendship – it is a union between persons who, loving God with their whole hearts, souls and minds, and loving each other as themselves, are joined for all eternity to each other and to Christ himself.

God is the author and provider of Christian friendship. “There is no true friendship unless you weld it between souls that cleave together” (Conf. IV, 7). Friendship must be stabilized in God. “If souls please you, then love them in God, because they are mutable in themselves but in Him firmly established; without him they pass and perish.” (Conf. IV, 18). God is a part of Christian friendship because “he loves his friend truly who loves God in him, either because God is in him or in order that he may be in him.” (Serm 336, 1). True Christian friendship is transformed by grace. It also exceeds human limitation (Ep. 250, 3). Friendship will find perfection in heaven, “Peace exists… for all who love each other in this life and are joined by the bonds of a faithful friendship.” (Ep. 249, 1).

St. Augustine believed that love should be active in a friendship. He wanted God to be the real object of a man’s love for his friend, as all holy love seeks God in man. Augustine did not want friendship to revolve around loving someone for oneself. He wanted men to have a creative love that sees men not for what they are but for what they might become. God is the end as He is the beginning of all true friendship. When we see Christ in other people we are aware of their innate goodness and that they are created in God’s image.

Confidence is an essential element in a well developed friendship. During this stage it is possible to confide intimate thoughts to him, knowing that they will be held as sacred (De div. quaes. 83). Augustine saw confidence as homage to the presence of God who dwells in a friend. It is not necessary to fear human weakness in this stage, for it is in God that one places confidence (Ep 73, 10).

Frankness is another key part of a truly solid friendship. Augustine wrote to Jerome, “Let us resolve to maintain between ourselves, the liberty as well as the charity of friendship, so that in the letters we exchange, neither of us shall be restrained from frankly stating to the other whatever troubles him.” (Ep 82, 36). Sometimes telling the truth requires considerable courage. Frankness can involve hurting people, but in a good friendship this might even strengthen the friendship. To be a true friend one must be willing to sacrifice the convenience of being agreeable for the good of a friend’s soul. It can be a sacrifice to wound the friend we know for his sake. But this sacrifice can be made out of love for God who is truth and is the “love that chastises” (Ep 93, 4-5). Fraternal correction should always happen without bitterness or harshness but with gentle understanding.

Prayer is more powerful than anything we can say or do to a friend. Good Christian friends know that they want good things for each other, and that God is the greatest good. They do all things possible to bring each other closer to Him. Augustine says, “Prayer is a necessity in friendship, for we cannot of ourselves bring another to God. We ought to ask him unceasingly to fill our hearts and those of our friends with His love.” (Ep 145, 7).

Augustine believed that only Christians who lived their faith were capable of perfect friendship. He advised that one should look for a friend among such persons and pray to God to send him one (De cat. Rudibus xxv). When one finds a man one wishes to have as a friend, he should make his love known. This is because there is no better incentive to love than to realize that one is already loved (De cat. Rudibus IV, 7). Later on in a friendship, friends should be aware of their duties towards each other and also understanding of their limitations. If a person sees that two of his friends are in disagreement, he should not abandon one so as to remain a friend with the other, but should try to restore peace between them (Serm. XLIX).

Augustine did not believe that physical separation of friends reduced the union among them. The object of friendship in the mind of a friend, lived in one’s own mind. Sharing in the same love of God, friends are never far from each other. Temporary or permanent separation (in the case of death) does not destroy a friendship (Ep 9,1). Friendship should never be terminated for slight reasons. When problems occur that lessen the warmth of friendship, one should accept every means to dispel them and restore the former depth of the friendship. But the termination of a friendship is justified if serious conditions change. For example, should a friend encourage another to renounce their faith it would be acceptable to finish the friendship.

As friendship is rooted in Christian love, it should not be confined to a small circle of people. Friendship should be shared with all those whom love and affection are due. Augustine spoke about the love of enemies, whom we are asked to pray for by Christ himself. He believed we must love our enemies in order to make them friends. “They will become friends when they abandon their evil ways.” (Serm LVI, X14). The real unity of Christians with Christ is founded on love. This is as “Christ has loved us that we may love one another; the effect of his love for us is so to bind us to one another in mutual love that we become the mutual body of which he is the head, his members linked together in that lovely bondage.” (In Ev. Jo. LXV, 2).

I am grateful to Patrick Paul M. de Castro for providing the quotes from St Augustine for this article.