A Lenten Experience: Friendship

A desired intimacy, focused on the Magister as the source of our love, enriches friendship: if wanting, it is best to enclose your heart in silence until enlightened by love, rather than by desire. 

The hurt we cause those we love pains our heart when our silence is interpreted as abandonment or worse, betrayal.  

Friendship encourages growth and independence, rather than decline and dependence. 

While affirming that love has no limits, it must not be forgotten that the course of true love is stony:  one example concerns the friendship between David and Jonathan (1 Samuel 18,1-2 Samuel 21,13).

Saint Jerome points out that a friendship that can cease has never been real: a wounding experience that perpetuates untruthfulness and thus conditions the possibility of friendship. 

Stumped, we harden our hearts: we incarcerate ourselves in darkness, because true friendship matters. Sometimes, we have to let go because some are meant to be part of our journey, not the journey.   

Lent encourages us to deepen our understanding of friendship by seeing things as God sees them. This awareness integrates an ability to interpret the signs of the times underlined by an inclusive understanding (Gaudium et Spes, 29), which does not exclude respecting those who are different, no longer determined by prejudices or mere emotions. 

Understanding these signs requires a heart that recognises in God its restfulness, which manifests a determination to listen as shown by Noah (Genesis 5,32-10,1), but also an experienced fellowship. 

Friendship is difficult when conditioned by what we see: “The Lord does not look at things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16,7). 

Friendship requires an inner equilibrium capable of eliminating the fear of the other: to recognise in the other, the other half of myself, for as we are told, “Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another” (Proverbs 27,17). 

This understanding of friendship gives sway to deeper insights, because “if we walk in the light, as he is the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his son, cleanses us from all sin” (1John 1,7). 

Hence, evangelical fellowship is neither intended nor desired unless it envisages ‘committed love’ (Agape) as its benchmark (1John 4,8). It is not, therefore, confined to the apparent but reminds us to examine our heart: “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man unclean, but eating with unwashed hands does not make him unclean” (Matthew 15,18-20).

Fear underlines much of our doings: relentless analysis consolidates it. Daydreaming about what is or is not ideal shackles the Kingdom’s mysterious workings within our hearts so that, blinded to its dynamism, we are impoverished of its joyfulness. 

What friendship entails is to extend our encounter with the Magister: to enrich it by recognising in the faces encountered his presence. 


Martin  


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