Friend, it is good that you are here!
“I have called you friends,” said Jesus. Today, remembering the Birthday of Ms. Lelis Cruzata, Coordinator of Faustinum and my dear Friend, I would like to share with you a few thoughts about friendship.
Friendship is a gift, which means that it cannot be the result of our efforts or wishes. We simply meet a person who evokes in our hearts a special and spontaneous kindness and closeness. We do not know why this is happening. We are fascinated by someone else's beauty and goodness, and we feel happy to be with this person: this is the sign of the gift. But also, as Simone Weil writes, friendship is the grace of God, thanks to which we receive a measure of what the love of our neighbor should be, if our spontaneity was not wounded by sin. We want closeness and cooperation with other person in some common cause or through a common fate. It is figuratively said that what distinguishes erotic love from friendship is the fact that lovers look at each other but friends look in one direction. So, the love of lovers is rather focused on the good that lovers find in each other.
Rather, the love of friends is a joint participation in the love of some good outside of them. This good may be different: homeland, art, work, sacrifice for the benefit of others, creativity, Church, children, etc. This good must either grow beyond pure necessity, so that the motive for taking it is the freedom of persons or be a community of a necessary fate - wandering, emigration, illness, etc. - which, however, is overcome thanks to humble consent and fortitude. The concrete good that binds friends is part and exemplification of the universal good, regardless of whether we understand it as the Idea of Plato's Good, transcending all being, and at the same time being the source of participation of all other Ideas, or it will be the God-Love of Christians, or even holiness without God, that is, atheistic humanism (Camus). Friends love each other because they see their friend's moral good in their pursuit of good. That is, a friend is therefore worthy of friendship, because he/she can see good, thanks to the fact that he/she has at least the beginning of good in himself/herself.
Friendship gave birth to community. In a thriving friendship, friends share almost everything, who they are and what they have. They share their thoughts, feelings, knowledge, humor, joys, but also pain, suffering, uncertainty, experience of guilt and sin. A faithful friend does not feel pain sharing time, home, money, contacts, useful information, work opportunities and social and professional promotion. On the contrary, it gives him/her joy to share with his/her friend all that he/she is and what he/she has, even more than if he/she would enjoy it himself/herself. A friend's good and development is his/her extraordinary joy.
True friendship is the source of deep and lasting happiness. If we recognize that happiness is the fruit of a life focused on good, beauty and truth, and that the synthesis of this trinity is love, friendship is a privileged source of happiness. A friend is a personal epiphany of what is divine in man, and even of God himself. His/her fragile humanity: imperfection, sinfulness, mortality, wounds and the ability to suffer, does not obscure Good and God, but, on the contrary, gives us a divine view of a person-friend. By discovering the humanity of a friend, we also discover God's tender love in us and through ourselves. Thanks to friendship, we become like God, without pride, but on the contrary in the joyful tenderness of sharing the gifts we have with others. Through friendship, we learn forgiveness, contemplation, humility, gentleness, mercy, compassion and kind service. We experience the joy of the presence of another human being, and we become able to endure everything with serenity and humor. Friendship is happiness.
Just being with a friend is a source of immense joy: we enjoy his/her presence, and we feel good with him/her. It is rather difficult to imagine that friends would feel bad about each other and not be able to live under the same roof. Moral kindness, i.e., directing towards the good of the other person, in the case of a friendship born of spontaneous sympathy, also manifests itself in an emotional reaction of pleasure, and even enjoying the presence of a friend, or even thinking about him/her. The usefulness of friends, although it is usually experienced daily, works especially in the moments where we need help the most: poverty, illness, mourning, lack of home or work, moral or professional failure. It can be said that just as there is nothing more useful than selfless good, also friendship, the source of which is a common sensitivity to good, is also something most useful. For what is profit but a good that is relative and inferior to the absolute good? If friends really participate in the absolute good, then mutual support in the goods will easily come to their mutual benefit.
Friendship implies a certain equality and reciprocity of friends. Equality here means the lack of the necessary submission of one friend to another, although it is possible that in different spheres of competence, age difference, or family relationships, friends do subordinate to each other. However, this aspect subordination never violates the fundamental equality of friends. Why? Because equality is a function of the freedom of two people who, as free people, bestow each other with friendship, or rather - as I wrote above - accept the gift of friendship.
Friendship also implies reciprocity and a certain symmetry of relations. It is possible to be kind to a person we do not know, but whom we know or imagine something about. But it is not a friendship. Because friendship is a certain bond of people and requires mutual awareness of its existence and relationship to each other. The equality in friendship in reciprocity, analyzed earlier, is expressed by a certain symmetry. This means: one should not go further in friendship, even in showing kindness or familiarity, than the friend wishes. And this is not a result of calculation, but of respect for a friend's freedom. Usually, friends, although similar in some respects, differ in temperament, intellectual or moral level, and each of them has their own mental limitations that diminish the ability to fully maturepersonally. Therefore, these differences and limitations must be noticed and treated with respect proper to friends.
Friends often say simple and profound words to each other: "It's good that you are here!"These words signify the joy of meeting a person who was looking for friendship and wanted to offer friendship. The willingness to offer friendship means to want to help and love freely. Of course, love is different from friendship, since love can be one-sided and friendship must be reciprocated, it is a mutual equation up, not a step down and heading for an abyss.
A friendly look, a friendly word and a friendly behavior are always the beginning of great miracles in a person's life. If this is the case, then one person, discovering the beauty of another, becomes happy and confidently utters the words: "It's good that you are here! Oh, incredibly good!”
Happy Birthday Dear Lelis
Until Tomorrow
Fr. george