Letter to jay 23/11/2001

"Here we are, you and I, and I hope a third, Christ, is in our midst." This statement of Christian friendship was written by Aelred, Abbot of Rievaulx, at the beginning of his book "Spiritual Friendship", which he completed about the year 1160. Aelred, who was nobody's fool, drew on the writings of Cicero as well as St John's Gospel, and he saw friendship as "that virtue by which the spirits are bound by ties of love and sweetness, and out of many are made one" (Spiritual Friendship 1:21). He goes on to remark that "even the philosophers of this world have ranked friendship not with things that are casual or transitory but with the virtues that are eternal". The First Letter of John puts it like this: "And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love, and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him" (1 John 2:16). And Aelred himself goes on to accept that "God is friendship" (Spiritual Friendship 1:70).

The time that Aelred spent as a young man at the court of King David of Scotland was not a happy one, and it was in the discipline of the Cistercian order that he found a framework for the remainder of his life. His work as Abbot involved the direction of a community that grew under his care from three hundred to over six hundred souls. He knew that personal relationships in such a place could be delicately balanced, and he constantly warns against the dangers of carnality. He was well aware of what could so easily go wrong. Yet his writings show a delicacy and understanding of the human condition. Many of the ideas that are contained in “Spiritual Friendship” did not long survive him in the monastic life, yet the relationships he describes are a reflection of those celebrated in Scripture: Jonathan and David, Jesus and the Beloved Disciple, and Paul and Timothy.

“For whosoever shall do the will of God”, said Jesus “the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother” (Mk 3:35). Many of the adult population are, for various reasons, unmarried, and they often find that local churches are far from supportive of them. For too many people, “Church” is somewhere to go on a Sunday, and all too often it comprises the “family in church” rather than the “church family”. There can be little sense of community, even among Christians, who often seem far better at public criticism of one another than mutual care and support. This represents a serious distortion in the life of the Body of Christ, and it is time to ask whether more needs to be said about the importance of friendship. For the simple process of sharing our lives more fully with others can bring so much joy and wellbeing. Here in St Wilfrid’s, our regular Parish lunches are really effective in bringing people together, and allowing them to open up and share experiences in a convivial atmosphere.

Many Christians, bishops included, seem to feel the most important thing about marriage is that people get a certificate, and don’t live “in sin”, to use that rather quaint expression. In this they are aping the society around them, which tends to focus on and idealise “partnerships”, including marriage: anyone who doubts this should try shopping in a supermarket for a single portion! Yet marriage without friendship is almost certainly destined to fail, and far too many marriages do just that. There would be benefits if people were to have greater experience of the kind of friendship that will ultimately sustain their marriages, both between the partners themselves and those around them. For we live in an age that has invested so much in the concept of romantic love between two people who share little else that it is not uncommon to find wedding services which are scenes of tribal division rather than spiritual unity.

Our evangelism suffers, too. We have a message that we know is a good one for people, but is hard to propagate in the world we inhabit. Whilst we sometimes have to be firm in the way that we express our faith, we must never be arrogant. We are far more likely to succeed if we have humility, compassion, and understanding of the obstacles to faith that people really face in the positions where they are at the time. In other words we have to establish friendship, however time consuming that may be. As Aelred writes of one lifelong friend “I did not spare him any, as it were reproaches, and I found him patient with my frankness and grateful. Then I began to reveal to him the secrets of my innermost thoughts, and I found him faithful. In this way love increased between us, affection glowed the warmer, and charity was strengthened, until we attained that stage at which we had but one mind and one soul …” (Spiritual Friendship, 3:124). Isn’t this the real challenge to the Church?

A higher profile for friendship in church life would bring benefits to many. Those who are homosexual might find it easier to accept that the traditional teaching of the Church could actually be good news for them. In debating human sexuality, the Lambeth Conference of 1998 reaffirmed that “abstinence is right for those not called to marriage” but it had little to say about friendship. It is a further sad reflection on the Christian life of our times that over seven hundred bishops had so little vision about this other great form of love. The recent debate with the Church of England on marriage discipline has shown a considerable range of opinion. Yet those who are divorced and do not have the option of remarriage within their Christian community might also come to realise that there are other ways in which their love can be expressed. Celibacy is often seen as a wholly negative condition, yet it can be the means by which the healing love of God can be brought to a greater number of people. It is commended by Jesus for precisely that reason (Mt 19:12).

We have grown accustomed to hearing – and even saying - the words “it’s only friendship”, for we live in a society that sees sexuality, and more importantly sexual expression, as the basis of all real relationships. Yet Aelred’s life and writings challenge this view. More than eight hundred years ago, he wrote these words about a friend: “He himself calmed me when distressed, he soothed me when angry. Whenever anything unpleasant occurred, I referred it to him, so that shoulder to shoulder, I was able to bear more easily what I could not bear alone. What more is there, then, that I can say? Was it not a foretaste of blessedness thus to love, and thus to be loved; thus to help and thus to be helped; and in this way from the sweetness of fraternal charity to wing one’s flight aloft to that more sublime splendour of divine love, and by the ladder of charity now to mount to the embrace of Christ himself; and again to descend to the love of neighbour, there pleasantly to rest? And so, in this friendship of ours, which we have introduced by way of example, if you see aught worthy of imitation, profit by it to advance your own perfection” (Spiritual Friendship 3:127).