Friendship

"The gift of friendship is the greatest gift any human being can bestow on another." Those were the opening words of my Licentiate thesis many years ago. Friendship, I believe, is the loving sharing of the most intimate in one's being. I once challenged a group of my students to maintain their bonds of loyalty. I said to them: "Friendship is dead today. Prove me wrong and we will come together 10 years from now to discuss our adventures." We have 7 more years to go before we meet again.
   I believe friendship is a neglected art. In order for it to last, both parties must be tolerant, trustful, loving and able to share burdens of privacy and public life. Gaining friendship on an individual level requires patience and confidence. Community friendships do not exist in a vacuum. They spring from individuals. To me, the example, par excellence, is Jesus of Nazareth whose religious and cultural backgrounds influenced his many close and devout friends. His cornerstone stems from Ecclesiasticus 6, 14f: "A faithful friend is a shelter, whoever finds one has found a rare treasure. A faithful friend is something beyond price ..." The ultimate test of Jesus' friendship was his willingness to lay down his life for those he loved. 
   Forming friendship demands time and shared interests, requiring virtue and charity. True and meaningful friendships are a gift to be sincerely desired, each demanding the magnanimity of the other, described by 4th century spiritual writer, Cassian, as "magnanimitate alterius sustineri". Our modern society, on the other hand, loves to share and yet, at the same time, fears the demands of burden sharing and too much self-revelation. Perhaps, the chief condition for achieving such depth of friendship is to be at ease and spontaneous without studied effort or calculation. True friends do not betray each other. They are neither judgmental nor offended by the other. I call friendship a virtue because it calls for a certain fundamental option in life designed to steer one into a meaningful and purposeful end. Friendship may not take away the inner loneliness which haunts every person. We need not stand alone. Our success can be measured in diverse scales; but, true success in life, in my opinion, is determined by friends who never desert us.
   Queen Victoria was once asked how she coped with the stress of her royal job. Her reply: "I have a friend." In the immortal words of the Spanish mystic, John of the Cross, "in the evening of our lives, we will be judged by our loving." May we be graced and judged by the love of true friends.         +Don Ronaldo