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February 28

The Caring Friend

Great friendships come from great hearts tempered by love and suffering who have come to the place where the well-being of the other is more important than their own concerns.

The twenty-first-century Western world is not rich in deep friendships. Our individualism and self-preoccupation have left us so self-focused and self-concerned that we are imploding. We have little sense that we are well loved and cared for.

St. Bernard, writing to the parents of a new monk, assures them: “I will be for him both a mother and a father, both a brother and a sister. I will make the crooked path straight. . . . I will temper and arrange all things that his soul may advance and his body not suffer.”59

Here we have a very different vision of friendship. It is one of deep care and nurture. This is a level of care that we feel we could never promise or deliver. Yet St. Bernard could do this within the framework of a monastic community.

The challenge, therefore, for us, is not to try to become the heroic, caring individual, but to create communities of care and friendship in the midst of which great friendships can emerge and grow. Nothing great comes from isolation. Only in relationship do we become who we can be, and from common nurturing much goodness can emerge.

Thought

Friendship is possibly the greatest gift we can give to another.