Episode Transcript  

One

How important is friendship?

Here’s an interesting question: how important is friendship? How much do you need it? Where do you rank it? A lot of people might think of friendship as being a kind of luxury good. They might think of friendship as though it were nice to have, but not the sort of thing you should count on and certainly not anything indispensable. It’s nice to have a strong friendship, but if you don’t, no big deal. Plenty of people get along fine without it. 

At the other end of the spectrum are the people who, deep down, think of friendship as a burden. Friends are a hassle, who take up time and energy, and have expectations. They’re an obligation, you have to get together every so often, and they ask you for favors, and you have to try to keep the conversation going, and it can be so tedious. Friendship, they think, is often more trouble than it’s worth.  

But actually, friendship is neither a luxury nor a burden. It’s a necessity. It’s an indispensable condition of human flourishing in this life and, even more importantly, it’s a critical factor in the process of salvation.

Two

The Church as Salvific Friendship. 

To realize how important friendship is, we need to reflect on two fundamental theological principles. The first is this: the Church is, in itself, a structure of friendship. The Catechism, in fact, defines the Church, the Kingdom of God, as the “gathering” of men around Christ, and the “community” of believers. That term, “community,” doesn’t mean a mere collection of people with a common attribute. It doesn’t mean a demographic. It means, as the Book of Acts describes the early Church, a group of people who share what they have with each other, who are intimately bound together. And to be intimately bound together by mutual sharing is simply what we mean by friendship. Therefore, to be in the Church is to be in a state of friendship. 

So, the Church is itself a kind of friendship. Now for the second theological principle: outside the Church, there is no salvation. That doesn’t mean you can’t be saved if you are not Catholic. It means the Church, the Body of Christ, makes salvation much easier to reach. It means that there needs to be some connection, however tenuous, with the body of Christ to enter into union with the Savior Himself. Jesus is the Head of the Church, and you can’t approach the head of the Church without approaching the body.

By the same token, to whatever extent one cuts oneself off from the Church, to that extent one cuts oneself off from Christ. But when we put these two principles together, we end up with a startling conclusion. Can you guess what it is?

Three

Outside of friendship, there is no salvation

If the Church is friendship, and if outside the Church there is no salvation, then it follows that outside of friendship there is no salvation. We all come to God through other people: parents, friends, spouses, a priest, a teacher. And the bridge that helped us cross over to God was a friendship, a relationship with that person. Through authentic friendships, we build a bridge where we cross over to others and help them cross over to God. 

Far from being an extravagance or an optional hobby on which to spend disposable free time, friendship belongs to the very essence of getting to Heaven. This conclusion brings a new urgency to the issue of friendship. Friendship is how God has chosen to save souls. The corollary, however, is that a dearth of friendship constitutes a threat to salvation. And, to the extent that many people, even many Catholics and Christians, do not have profound friendships in their lives, that constitutes a threat to the salvation of many souls.

So what can we do about it? What can we do about this friendship deficit syndrome that is putting souls in such danger? 

Four

How to Promote Friendship

If what we need to be saved is friendship, then the obvious question is: What is friendship, and how does friendship happen? 

Friendship is a bond between two or more people united in pursuing something greater than each other. What does it take to establish and cultivate a friendship? It requires shared activity. You could put it philosophically by saying that being and doing are inseparable, which just means that the way people end up being together in a meaningful way is by doing things together in a meaningful way. 

So the basic normal way you establish friendship is by doing something with the other person, whether it means shared meals, shared conversations, shared work, shared recreation, shared prayer, or, ideally, all of the above.

Notice that this list includes both natural and supernatural activities. Yes, the only truly satisfying friendship is friendship that includes a mutual pursuit and celebration of divine things, but here, as elsewhere, grace tends to build on nature. People who don’t know how to build natural friendships will probably be unable to cultivate supernatural friendships. Which means a culture like ours, in which people are spending less time eating together, talking together, etc, will likely be a culture with fewer holy friendships. And as we’ve seen, that’s not just a human problem. It’s a major spiritual problem.

Five

Resolution

To sum up: a crucial aspect of evangelizing and sanctifying our culture is the promotion of friendship, which is absolutely necessary not only to human flourishing but to bringing souls to Christ. Promoting friendship concretely means, simply, promoting common activities, so it’s imperative that we work to help people begin to share their lives in various ways, so they can enter more fully into the spiritual community of the Church, which is the only path to greater intimacy with the Lord. 

So let’s start with this: who are the people God placed in our lives that we are supposed to help get to Heaven? What are we consistently doing with them? Are we regularly eating meals, taking walks, or praying the Rosary with them? Are there people we regularly have over for dinner, or go out with to have coffee, or read and talk about books with?

If not, then we’re not cultivating the natural soil where friendship can grow. And without that natural soil, the supernatural life of friendship will never take root. 

So, let’s get busy doing things, but doing them with the people we want to help get to Heaven. 

If you enjoyed this meditation, subscribe below.