Philosophical and theological expounding of friendship

by Prof. Anton Meemana

Only a person who could sustain and maintain great friendships could write adequately about friendship. This book is, to a greater extent, a collaborative effort which is born out of a friendship in philosophical apprenticeship between Fr. Ajith Wellington, OMI and Fr. Richard Wolak, OMI. A friendship has finally and filially given birth to this book and in reciprocity, the book has also further strengthened and cemented that friendship. This is an ample proof that true friendship bear fruits, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.

A good philosopher always makes distinctions to clarify how she arrives at certain insights. Understanding something coherently and articulating it comprehensively is a hallmark of a great philosophical spirit. This is very much needed in the light of contemporary Sri Lankan tendency to be opinionated about anything and everything. Human beings ought to become intelligent not gossipy or opinionated.

In trying to reach up to the mind of Saint Thomas Aquinas, one also begins to understand oneself with greater clarity. When Fr. Ajith writes and teaches about St. Thomas, he truly becomes himself. Making some fine and refined philosophical nuances, Fr. Ajith leads us through the thickets of Thomisian philosophical tapestry.

Thomism

The best in Thomism is best for all peoples regardless of their religious background. A retrieval of Thomistic heritage is beneficial for everybody – catholics and non - catholics alike.

Saint Thomas enjoyed deep supernatural pleasure in continuous learning, reflecting, teaching and writing and shared with us the fruits of his intellectual labour. Whatever is not shared is lost forever. What he understood contemplatively, he lived out actively. Theory and practice were not two separate departments in his life but they were organically and coherently blended and bonded.

In his life time, Saint Thomas formed deep and life-long friendships (for instance, with Reginald of Piperno and William of Moerbeke) , befriended Aristotelian heritage, wrote and encouraged others to become good friends for their friends.

You can befriend this book and then it will also befriend you return and offer you continuous spiritual nourishment. Reading a book about friendship is to form an intimate friendship with that book. So this book will make you a better friend and train you to form better friendships.

Sophisticated study

This highly nuanced and technically sophisticated study is distributed amongst five main sections. In chapter one, Fr. Ajith reflects about the influence of Aristotle’s logical and epistemological structure on St. Thomas’ brilliant analysis on human person as a ‘’ compound whose substance is both spiritual and corporeal’’ (p.18) .

To love one’s friends is to love oneself as another. When you have become a better friend to your friends, you will have also encouraged them to become better friends to their friends and therefore true friendships are contagious. Life without friends (could there really be such a life?) is an empty life, and aimless life and a useless life. The quality of human life is largely dependent upon the quality of our friendships. The one who truly loves one’s friends truly loves oneself too.

Instead of controlling, dominating, manipulating and cajoling a friendship, you should humbly allow it you guide you, deepen you, enrich you, purify you and empower you. Friendship is one’s true home. In and through friends, one finds oneself, one finds one’s real abode. With friends, one is at home with oneself and when this happens, one also begins to live in God. In actual fact, God helps me to cultivate myself authentically and to find myself divinely and deeply.

As he points out further; “The human being is unique. because he does not belong to the world of purely intellectual beings, nor does he belong to the world of purely material beings.

Fr. Richard Wolak

Fr. Ajith Wellington

He , in fact, occupies the boundary between the purely intellectual and purely material, by the very fact that he has a living body, a body animated by a rational soul which also contains the faculties or the powers of the sensitive and vegetative souls. Thus, because the human being is an “ embodied soul” or a “living body” (a body animated by a rational soul), passions are an integral part of his nature, as they are of the nature of all animals. This is because of the body, the material component, which is the equipment for sensitive or animal life. (pp.20-21).

In the same chapter, there is a dazzling exposition on love as amor and its multiple manifestations.

“The main thrust of this question is love itself. Love occupies a central place in the life of every human being. It is the passion that helps us to move forward, and enables us to act and do something. We devote ourselves and dedicate our energies to seeking something which we love deeply and passionately. Absence of love means to be dead to all good. “To love is to be alive to good, it is to experience the world’s loveliness and to respond to it. When we love something we seek it, we set up our lives to attain it, and when we have gained what we love, we find joy” (p. 27).

Archetype

“Love of friendship sees the other (the person loved) as another self. St. Thomas states that our love of friendship for another is an extension of one’s love for oneself. One’s love for oneself is absolutely basic and primary, and it can be considered as the foundation and archetype of all friendly relations. The extension of one’s love for oneself to the other becomes natural and easy when the other, considered as another self, possesses actually our same qualities and excellences, for the love springs from the precise points of agreement. The idea of similitude is best understood in this context, because friendship is not a one way thing, rather it is mutual benevolence, or love of friendship reciprocated.” (pp.37-38).

Chapter two focuses on different types of virtues and their relation to love as caritas.

Friendship is a reflection on how God works in our lives. Friendship is the good par excellence that continues to connect as to God ; the way to good God is through good friends. When God becomes one’s true friend, one becomes a true friend of everybody. One cannot be a good friend of God and not befriend other human beings.

Falling in love with God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our might, with all our mind and with all our integrity is the ultimate fulfilment of human life. In loving God, we also begin to love those whom God loves and without loving them the way God loves them, we cannot love God.

Let us listen to our brilliant author again:

“Friendship, on the other hand, is only a possible with people similar to ourselves and those to whom we are abound by good will. St. Thomas, in the sed contra, quotes the words of Jesus “I will not now call you servants … but my friends ‘. The reason the Lord called his apostles “friends” is, according to St. Thomas, purely and simply his caritas. Thus caritas, as given by Jesus to his disciples, proves to be friendship. (p. 110).

Chapter three discusses at length the concept of communicatio.

A friend of God, although it is God who makes us his friends, is necessarily a friend of everybody. Human love is not on the same level as Divine love but at the same time, we cannot grasp something of Divine love without an experience of human friendships. God does not bypass or short circuit human relationships but works in and through them. God perfects human friendships. When two people become friends, God is there in the midst of them, ever active and ever encouraging them.

As Fr. Ajith discusses; “Thus, there exists a friendship between God and man, and this friendship is made possible by the initiative of God, the superior one, to share his happiness with man, the inferior partner. Therefore, St. Thomas is able to affirm that between God and man there exists a type of friendship because they do have something in common. This communicatio removes the disparity that exists between God and man to same measure, and brings about some kind of similitude, and thereby provides the necessary foundation upon which the friendship between these two unlikely partners is founded.” (p. 137).

No obligation

“However, there is no obligation: God is not bound to share His happiness with man. The Divine initiative is not the response on the part of God to a request by man. In fact, it is offered as a gift. As we know from our experience, a gift can be refused. As the person who is giving the gift, is not bound to give the gift, so also the receiving person is not bound to accept it. Now, in the case of man and God, even though man is free to accept or refuse God’s happiness extended to him as a gift, yet the very acceptance of that gift adds another possibility to man, namely, the possibility of friendship with God.” (p. 138).

“The common ground, upon which our friendship with God is based, is the very life God himself. This common good, however, is consequent upon God’s own initiative to share His happiness with man. So the communicatio / common good between God and man is God’s own happiness. This removes the great gulf that exists between God and man and provides a common foundation which brings about a similitudo upon which to base this friendship between God and man.” (pp. 172-173).

“The good that we share with God, upon which our friendship with God is founded, is the ultimate end (telos) of human life. However, as embodied souls our ides of this happiness is imperfect. Friendship is a dynamic reality, not something static. We grow in friendship. The bond becomes stronger. The constitutive activity of human life should be the attainment of divine happiness in its fullness. Nevertheless, as embodied souls it is an impossibility for us. For St. Thomas friendship (caritas) is the means whereby we can attain that happiness.” (p. No 174).

Acts of charity

“Hence by acts of charity we love our neighbor insofar as they are seen as related to God. In fact, a man is motivated to love the neighbours by his love of God in the way he loves the friends of his friends because they are the friends of his friends. However, charity does not extend to irrational creatures. In other words, irrational creatures cannot be our friends, for charity is founded on the sharing of eternal beatitude, and the irrational creatures do not have the capacity to share in the eternal beatitude which charity supposes. Thus charity as friendship does not extend to irrational creatures.” (pp. 174-175)

Chapter four elaborates in the complexity of amicitia.

According to Albert Einstein, there is only one ultimate question to be asked; that is, ‘ Is the universe a friendly place ? ’ Everything else in life depends upon how we are going to understand and answer that grand question. Every question we ask is ultimately a question about God.

The ultimate ground of all our questioning is our innate and intrinsic yearning to know God. God want us to ask more and more questions, even about God Himself.

“Benevolence is the wishing of good to another. However, it is not mere wishing of good to another, rather wishing of good to the other for the sake of the other. Benevolence is a mode of love,” (p. 187).

“Benevolence is the first step towards friendship. In fact, friendship adds something to a one-sided love of benevolence, a society of two in their love. What becomes evident in this whole activity is that there can be no friendship until and unless the love of benevolence is consciously reciprocated by the other. Implicit in this discussion is the fact that love of friendship that we extend to another anticipates and seeks a reaction, namely, to love with love of friendship is to will to be loved with love of friendship. Otherwise it remains love of benevolence and never friendship. So, the friendship without any doubt implies reciprocity of well-washings of two subjects.” (p. 188).

“God is the cause of happiness, because he communicates to and shares his happiness with us, and this sharing is the basis for the friendship of charity.

Therefore, all the other objects of charity, be they our neighbor, our body or ourselves, must not only be subordinated to God, but also in some way related to him as objects of charity. God is principal object of charity, that is, God is to be loved before all others “for He is loved as the cause of happiness, whereas our neighbor is loved as receiving together with us a share of happiness from Him.” (p. 202).

“Our friendship with God widens our horizon, because we love God and all those who are connected to Him: me and God, but also me and others because of God,” (p. 223).

“Thus the friend is someone special. He is more than just another human being. He is someone I like and I enjoy being with; someone I trust and rely on; someone who is part of my life, an integral part of what in my life valued by me.” (pp. 224-225).

Happiness

Human life aims at happiness and A friendship becomes most promising, most enriching, and most nourishing when it has no hidden agenda. The complete flourishing of friendship happens when it is for its own sake not for any utilitarian or calculative purpose.

“Our experience tells us that life is full of both good and bad times. We prefer the good times, but we cannot escape the bad times. We have got to go through both. Friendship responds to the need to cope with the inevitable suffering and solitude that attend human existence, and this explains the conviction that one needs friends.

A person who cultivates friendship is like the wise man who built his house on a rock with a solid foundation, which stands straight and strong. A true friend is like the house built on a rock. He stands by his friend’s side both in good times and in bad. So, the strong person is one who is blessed with genuine friends. He is one who can take both the good and the bad in life courageously, because he has a reliable support and shelter, his friend. In fact, friends are our truest treasures. However, friendship takes time, i.e., friendships cannot be cultivated overnight. It is a process of growing together supported by certain conditions.” (p. 229).

In chapter five, Fr. Richard Wolak has philologically and philosophically accomplished a virtuoso performance on the parable of the Good Samaritan. His analysis sounds very practical simply because it is philosophically and exegetically very solid and deep. Real practically is never anti–intellectual.

Theory is the highest form of practice. This quite inadequate and mistaken dichotomy between theory and practice is not a valid concept at all. One cannot be profoundly practical unless one tries to grasp things theoretically. Theory means, more than anything else, proper understanding, adequate understanding, objective understanding. It also means a closest approximation of truth.

Objectivity

Theory also means objectivity to the best of human intelligence and judgement. The most practical man is the most theoretical man and a deeply theoretical man is also a profoundly practical man. A deeply theoretical man is also a theological man and that man par excellence in history is Saint Thomas Aquinas.

The ultimate theory is theology and therefore the ultimate practice is also theology. Christian praxis is knowledge born out of deep contemplation and deep contemplation is the ultimate Christian praxis.

We live as good as we think, or better, as good as we contemplate.

Loving one’s neighbour is to treat another as myself , that is, to feel what another person deeply feels and to act meaningfully as if it is I myself who is suffering, who is in agony ,who is in torment.

Each one of us is called to become a good Samaritan to the one who is beaten up, left behind, marginalised and abandoned, to be dear and near to the one who is in dire need.

Real love is hard work, apparent Sisyphean labour, and endless toil. Loving requires the best in us, makes us magnanimous, courageous and generous like the good Samaritan.

To love is to risk, to love deeply is to risk more courageously and therefore only the brave can love. Love is an ongoing decision, a decision that requires continuous renewal and resolution, followed by commitment. Love dispels hatred, prejudice and darkness and compels and propels us towards meaningful action for the orphan, the marginalised, the widow, the prisoner, the stranger and the beggar.

In conclusion, Fr. Ajith writes; “Relationships in real life involve different levels of friendships. But human begins are designed by God for lasting relationships. Often our isolationist society offers only vague, empty relationships. God wants us to have friends here on earth. Most of all, He wants us to be friends with Him. God wants to be our friend. God wants us to be friend others and that is why He takes the initiative to share His goodness with us, thereby establishing a similitudo on which to found our friendship with Him.” (p. 269)

Dynamic

“Friendship is not a one-way traffic: it is something mutual. It is not something static: it is something dynamic. It grows all the time. This is particularly true of charity, because our friendship with God is imperfect here on earth.

Friendship is like a seed. It is not enough that we plant it, we need to attend to a whole lot of other things that are required to make it grow. If we fail to attend to those necessities, the growth of the plant is stunted and it will fail to bear fruit, or it might even dry up. In the same way, friendships die because one side takes this relationship for granted.

Our friendship with God can suffer the same fate. As embodied souls, as people on earth, we can lose charity which is our friendship with God, and subsequently it will affect our friendship with others, as they derive from this friendship with God.” (p. 270).

One can draw much inspiration from the grand themes evoked in this admirable study. Here one insight has been clarified, amplified, magnified and strengthened with the help of another insight. Indeed, the complexity of friendship requires a sophisticated mode of thinking and understanding and the book has done precisely that.

Reading a good book is a great service to humanity and there is no substitute whatsoever for the habit of reading. Reading is a form of therapeutic activity.

It is the spiritually healthiest food for the human soul. A nation that does not read good books is a nation that has no soul, no authenticity, no depth and no substance; it is a lost and loose nation. Is this not the contemporary predicament in Sri Lanka?