By Stephen Freeman, August 4, 2021 You meet someone and like them. You slowly get to know them. Conversation and sharing, listening and learning, a picture or a reality begin to emerge. You think about them when they’re away. You’re aware that you matter to them as well. The thought of anything hurting them is painful. This is friendship. We easily reduce friendship to a set of shared emotions. Why we like someone else, we can
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, November 22, 2016 You meet someone and like them. You slowly get to know them. Conversation and sharing, listening and learning, a picture or a reality begin to emerge. You think about them when they’re away. You’re aware that you matter to them as well. The thought of anything hurting them is painful. This is friendship. We easily reduce friendship to a set of shared emotions. Why we like someone else, we
Knowing how to Learn Jerome said: ‘Take care not to seek to become a teacher first and then a pupil, or an officer first and a soldier afterwards. ‘Take care not to enter a street you have never been in before if you do not have someone to show you the way. You could get completely lost. ‘No art can be learnt without an expert teacher. ‘You will need a long time to learn what
How to Love a Friend … and Persecute an Enemy Augustine said: ‘The evil-doer is sad when he sees that his enemy has taken a warning and avoided punishment.’ Gregory said: ‘We are only faithful to our friends when our actions match our promises. ‘People have no right to persecute their enemies with the sword, but they should persecute them with prayer.’ Jerome said: ‘Often our friends are only so-called friends: not being able to
All of Abba Joseph’s teachings so far probably make pretty good sense to most readers. As much as we may not live up to the ideal of mutual purity of heart, which defines real love, it is pretty easy to see its value, and it is equally easy to see the direct opposition to this ideal that anger presents within us. Yet, one of the most provocative aspects of Abba Joseph’s teaching on relationships is
Abba Joseph teaches that a Christian’s first priority is to prevent anger from arising in a relationship. By this teaching, Abba Joseph does not mean simply that we should avoid open conflict with other people, which is to say, avoid anger ‘s most obvious outward symptoms. Indeed, pretending one has ceased to be angry by doing things like isolating oneself, stewing in silence, or being what we moderns might describe as “passive aggressive” and trying
Abba Joseph now expands on his teaching by identifying six key foundations for this kind of true friendship. I) Detachment with regard to all earthly possessions and wealth. 2) Not considering oneself wise, but deferring to the point of view of the other. 3) Seeking love and peace above all. 4) Refraining from anger at all times. 5) Calming the anger of the friend should it arise. 6) Constant reflection on the coming of death.3
Because we are exploring life in society as a web of relationships, it is important to establish from the outset a picture of what the fathers of the Conferences thought relationships should be like for Christians. No matter how deep into the desert they went, none of the fathers was under any illusion that a human being can live free from relationships with others. What is more, the fathers did not consider a life of
This experience explains what Rainer Maria Rilke meant when he said, “Love . . . consists in this, that two solitudes protect and border and salute each other”· and what Anne Morrow Lindbergh had in mind when she wrote, “I feel we are all islands in a common sea.” It made me see that the togetherness of friends and lovers can become moments in which we can enter into a common solitude which is not
There are four different Greek words for love: agape (brotherly love), eros (sexual love), philia (friendship), and storge (compassion). The word usually used for Christian love—love for God and our fellow human beings—is agape. However, the other three words can also be applied to Christian love. Philia There is an interesting passage in the Gospel (John 21:15-17) when Christ asks Peter three times, “Do you love Me?” and Peter replies, “You know I love You.”
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