GRACED FRIENDSHIP PART IV OF IV: Ordered Friendships Help Heal Past Hurts

GRACED FRIENDSHIPS WITH ALL

Once we reorient our graced friendships with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we begin to have holy friendships with those around us.  The amazing thing about God’s plan is that whatever we missed in our childhood he brings to us in his providence to restoration and healing.  I find this happens so frequently that it seems it almost a spiritual maxim of God’s providence:  God’s goodness will not permit us to remain in isolation as emotional orphans but bring different people into our lives to reveal the mystery of his gratuitous love.

A graced friendship is a relationship that is based on grace, upon living a relationship in the way that is pleasing to God.  It is truly amazing the power that graced friendship has in healing us.  Again, let us be clear that it is firstly a relationship with God in frequent reception of the Sacraments and prayer, and then relating with all his friends.

ALMSGIVING

The last talk I gave this lent was about prayer, fasting, and almsgiving to help bring about redemption.  In it I pointed out that almsgiving is “a sincere and free gift of self to one’s neighbor.”  This is the heart of graced friendship.  It is loving and being loved.  Giving the gift of one’s self to the other and receiving the gift of the other person.  This also describes the inmost life of the Trinity.  It is what our deepest heart longs for, to love and be loved.  Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta said, “poverty is loneliness and feeling unloved.  Give alms of love,” and St Peter tells us in his first letter, “By obedience to the truth you have purified yourselves for a genuine love of your brothers; therefore, love one another constantly from the heart” (1 Peter 1:22).  This is the true medicine that heals the heart.  Blessed Pope John Paul II said, 

“Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it.” (Redemptor Hominis, 10)

CHASTITY

Graced friendship is also essential if one is going to live a chaste life.  In fact the Catechism of the Catholic Church says about it,

“The virtue of chastity blossoms in friendship. It shows the disciple how to follow and imitate him who has chosen us as his friends, who has given himself totally to us and allows us to participate in his divine estate. Chastity is a promise of immortality.

“Chastity is expressed notably in friendship with one's neighbor. Whether it develops between persons of the same or opposite sex, friendship represents a great good for all. It leads to spiritual communion.”  (CCC 2347)

You could say another word for chastity is friendship.  Friendship with God in your body and the ordered friendship with all the friends God gives you. 

There is a need that our friendships remain chaste.  All too often, even in Catholic circles, friendships “go south,” go sour, when a person’s woundedness or neediness propels them to relate inordinately in friendships, causing unhealthy attachments or exclusivity, and may lead them to sin, shipwrecking the very reason God brought that person into their life to begin with.  If a person is aware of their wounds leading them toward a sinful or inordinate tendency with a friend, especially when they notice the origin of their need or wound is a lack of masculine or feminine affirmation, they need to learn how to discipline themselves.

Aquainas pointed out that passions blind the intellect and weaken the will.  As soon as we notice that a particular friendship manifests an disordered attraction or repulsion, we should be careful to mortify that passion and be weary of our own judgment about that relationship.  That is, we choose not to listen to ourselves.  We lead our heart in this case instead of following it.  We ignore our judgment and make the safe assumption that we are not trustworthy with regard to a particular friendship, humble ourselves so that God may grant us light and his grace may bring us back into equilibrium.  On the other hand, we ought to be careful to not react too rashly to our own sinfulness lest our disciplined passions react like a child that has been harshly treated, complaining and whining until we give in.

OUR LADY

The Virgin Mother of God is a great helper in relationships.  She helps us in a real friendship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  She is Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity, a woman of communion and friendship first with God and then with all his friends.  She teaches us the spirit of communion, of solidarity, of service and of humility.

The principle lesson Our Mother teaches us in relating with others is humility.  She humbled herself all day before every creature, not trusting her own estimation, but always seeking God’s light and his Holy Spirit to be the very spirit by which she relates with others.  May Our Lady help us to heal from our relationships by graced friendship.