Today is a friend’s birthday and he has been, is, and will be a good friend. He is a good man, one of the smartest and most talented I know, and I know a great many talented and intelligent men, but he would not wish me about to say this publicly about him! What I will do is comment on how excellent friendship is or can be. I hope he gets the message.
Friendship is now viewed as much less important than romantic love. Tell a person that he or she is “doomed” to never have a beloved and American culture sees this as a tragic condition. Since many of us will not find a beloved or at least a fitting partner this is very bad news. Some will find their beloved does not return their love and others that their beloved lets them down. More than one of us fall in love with someone that we cannot marry or licitly love in the way we desire and this is not easier.
Ask Tristan.
Most human cultures are not so disturbed by this fact because they did not make the mistake we make. They did not make “romantic love” the highest good or at least they did not make the erotic romance the highest human good. Instead, they saw friendship as the ultimate human bliss. Friends are not erotic partners so Lancelot was not Guinevere’s friend. Friends are not superiors we serve as Sam served Frodo. God is not my friend.
Friends are equal human beings pursuing some good talks or a cause outside of the friendship. They are most like colleagues, but the relationship is deeper. Friends come to love each other because they sacrifice themselves together, voluntarily, for the common project. This project might be a football team (Packer nation!) or more sublimely a charitable deed (Star of Hope!).
Aristotle and the ancients were right: you can be fully human without a beloved, but you cannot be fully human without a friend. Humankind is not meant to live alone. However hard it might be, I could thrive without progeny, but I could not thrive without friends. Friendship fights loneliness. Friendship checks our selfishness and is a pure expression of love.
Friendship begins in the common project and is always filtered through this quest but soon deepens. You come to love the friend for himself. Because you are not staring at him too hard, you see him better. You do not lose his essence for the incidental details. When studying a text with a group, for example, the harder I have looked at the text, the more I have come to appreciate the splendid qualities of my fellow students. Study a text long enough with one person, as I have done, and soon you wish to die with and for that man.
Christianity promotes friendships. God became flesh so that in the manhood of Jesus, fully God and fully man, we could enter into a friendship with Jesus. The gathering of the people of God provides the perfect cause for friendship. Study of God’s revelation, the Bible, is another chance to bond. No Christian will ever be commanded to be alone. No Christian will ever be told not to have a friend. Chastity enables friendship and chastity is available to anyone.
My calling might be celibacy, but I will never be called to give up chastity and friendship.
Happy birthday my friend!
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