From time-to-time we’ll offer a reprint from another blog or a section of a book. This piece comes from Fill All Things: The Dynamics of Spirituality in the Parish Church, Robert Gallagher, OA, Ascension Press, 2008. Here we are sharing parts of a section from the chapter on “The Renewal – Apostolate Cycle”
In Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, Robert Bellah offered an understanding of friendship grounded in Aristotle, suggesting that friendship has three components: “Friends must enjoy each other’s company, they must be useful to one another, and they must share a common commitment to the good.” In Fierce Tenderness, Mary Hunt defines friendship as “voluntary human relationships that are entered into by people who intend one another’s well-being and who intend that their love relationship is part of a justice-seeking community.” It appears that at the moment our society is having a more and more difficult time nurturing or even understanding friendship in the way described by Bellah and Hunt. The parish church may offer a setting for both thinking about and experiencing friendship.
C. S. Lewis explored the relationship between companionship and friendship by suggesting that both had value and that friendship might emerge out of companionship. “Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, ‘What? You too? I thought I was the only one.’” Lewis then notes that companionship is based in some shared activity or interest, “a common religion, common studies, a common profession, even a common recreation.” He goes on to describe a movement from companionship into friendship. “All who share it will be our companions, but one or two or three who share something more will be our Friends. In this kind of love, as Emerson said, Do you love me? means Do you see the same truth?—Or at least, ‘Do you care about the same truth?’ The man who agrees with us that some question, little regarded by others, is of great importance, can be our Friend. He need not agree with us about the answer” (The Four Loves). Parish churches are for many people a place of friendship. Some people are first attracted to a parish in the hope of meeting people and developing friendships. The connections begun in liturgy, classes and parish social gatherings are frequently extended into dinner together, time in a coffee shop or tavern, or brunch after the Sunday Eucharist.
We might pick up on Aelred’s thinking about how a Christian community can be a “school of love.” For him the monastic community was not only Benedict’s “school for the Lord’s service,” it was also a “school of love.” In community people establish spiritual friendships, and in and through those friendships are brought to friendship with God. Aelred’s view was that human beings long for God because God has placed that desire in their heart. In loving Christ as a dear friend we can realize our longing. For Aelred, “God himself is friendship,” and “he who dwells in friendship, dwells in God and God in him.” John Henry Newman pointed to the same natural operation that expanded the range of our loving. “The love of our private friends is the only preparatory exercise for the love of all men.”
Parish-based friendships can develop into spiritual friendships, and both can be a pathway into friendship with God and compassion for others. These friendships make us a friend of God. In sacramental reality the two are intertwined—friendship with people leads to friendship with God, and being God’s friend will find expression in friendship with other people. Charles Williams had two expressions that capture what happens in the “school of love” we experience with friends. There are the “acts of the City,” the acts of sacrifice, forgiveness, reconciliation and substitution that are the sacramental activities of spiritual friendship. And there are the exchanges of daily life, the “habits of heaven”—of forgiving and letting ourselves be forgiven, in helping one another and allowing ourselves to be helped. …
We connect to our deepest longings in and through our friends. There is something in our friend that allows us to see our own desires and to experience what we like about ourselves. In her book, Fierce Tenderness: A Feminist Theology of Friendship, Mary Hunt writes, “In each friendship we are brought face to face with ourselves, with one another, and with a larger world in which the forces of attraction work beyond our ultimate control.”
This abides,
Brother Robert, OA
The Feast of Florence Nightingale, Nurse, Social Reformer, 1910
I'm adding my own comment. Something I came across the other day. "The sharp decline in churchgoing in American society may contribute to inequality: Chetty found that friendships in religious groups are more likely to cut across class and income than friendships formed in schools or neighbourhoods." 20 Observations On Friendship - by Ian Leslie - The Ruffian