Newspaper Page Text
#
i
I
PAGE 5 - November 16,1972
Friendship--Tell Me Who Your Friends Are
BY DR. LAWRENCE LOSONCY
(NC Photo)
“FOR OLDER PEOPLE friendship is a great blessing, and a lack of friends can make old age a sorrow.”
“Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are.”
This saying is a recognizable part of American folklore, although
we seldom pause to reflect on the meaning of these words. The
shorthand version of this saying is “birds of a feather flock
together.”
We have always known that friends influence one another
very strongly. We have also known quite clearly that we tend to
choose our friends on the basis of what we have in common.
The first thing little children do is to “make friends” when they
go outdoors to play or when they go to school. Friendship is a
central concern of adolescence, for it is one way of measuring
what others in the peer group think about the person in
question.
Friendship is also a permanent concern for adults in their
work and in their social life. For older people friendship is a
great blessing, and lack of friends can make old age a sorrow.
The wedding blessing asks God to favor the husband and wife
with many friends who will stand by them.
Friendship has been held sacred by all men of all ages.
Violation or betrayal of friendship has constituted one of the
great recurring themes of drama. From “BECKETT” and “MAN
FOR ALL SEASONS” to “HAMLET” and even “THE ILIAD”
and “THE ODYSSEY,” mankind has seen that if you cannot count
on your friends, you cannot count on anything. The prophets of
the Old Testament warned people over and over that they were
apt to share the destiny of those around them.
John Dewey warned that we constitute an essential part of
one another’s environments, which environment influences all
of us. Socrates chose to die in the company of his trusted
Church Healthier, Stronger Everyday
BY FR. JOSEPH M. CHAMPLIN
Father Godfrey Diekmann was one of the early pioneers in
the American liturgical movement, an eloquent publicist for the
cause, and today can count his friends in the United States and
beyond by the hundreds.
My first encounter with this giant of a man dates back to the
Grand Rapids Liturgical Week in 1953. After one stormy session
in which the moderator rather caustically cut down an inquirer,
I watched Father Godfrey, who was sitting with the audience,
race down an aisle, place his arm on the man’s shoulder and
discuss with him the controverted question. He sensed this
person had been hurt and wanted to heal the wound.
This Benedictine speaker, writer, teacher from St. John’s
Abbey in Collegeville seems to combine curiously divergent
qualities in his work. He prods, as a reformer, people on to
higher things, but causes a minimum of pain in the process.
Furthermore, his words and presence before a group often has
the reconciling effect for many which they had for one in that
isolated incident at a Michigan high school auditorium.
> I visited for two hours with Father Diekmann last summer in
California where we were both lecturing at the University of San
Francisco. We discussed the national scene and he agreed with
my observation outlined during the last two columns about the
Catholic Church of the 70’s entering upon a period of relative
serenity or, perhaps more accurately, a time of healing,
reconciliation and consolidation.
Father Godfrey lectures frequently to the clergy and his
experience supports my assertion that priests in this country
seem now to be working better together. He finds older priests
no longer feel they have all the answers, no longer brush aside
the ideas of younger men.
The revolutionaries, in his estimation, fall into the 30-40
year-old age bracket with the recently ordained much less
aggressive, even conservative. Moreover, he has discovered the
young clergy as well are less dogmatic, more inclined to listen
and learn from others. Apparently we priests have absorbed and
* put into practice the true nature of friendship which makes it
possible to disagree without bitterness and to see that
opposition to our view does not mean an attack on our person.
This liturgy leader, however, does not consider the predicted
time of reconciliation or serenity as a return to normalcy, a
restoration of the frozen, immobile Church. Rather he believes
the principle of change has finally been accepted by the vast
majority. Both clergy and laity in his view understand that the
Church and its worship forms must constantly adapt and adjust
to the shifting needs of modern man.
A new, very attractively produced magazine, “Freeing the
Spirit,” a periodical of “Black Liturgy Published by the
National Office for Black Catholics” illustrates, I think, the
point. No doubt, there will be in the future additional
confrontations, and acute ones, between Black Catholics and
establishment personnel on various matters. But this highly
professional quarterly in effect says that the slow process of
adapting Roman liturgy to the unique culture of Blacks living
in the United States is under way. An advertisement reads: “The
beginning of a new tradition in Worship . . .an adventurous
search for the elements of a worship that is, at once,
authentically Afro-American and authentically Catholic.”
The liturgies at St. Francis de Sales in New Orleans, at St.
Francis Xavier in Baltimore, at St. Thomas in Harlem offer
actual situations in which these abstract ideals have been
translated into successful practice.
We might, in my judgment, say that the Catholic Church of
the 70’s in this country can be compared to a person who has
just returned from radical surgery in the hospital. It is weak, a
bit shaky, has lost weight and bears scars, but fundamentally is
healthier and slowly growing stronger every day.
“GOD’S SOLUTION IS that we love someone.” A young man and woman exchange looks of love. (NC Photo)
Friendship Must Be Real
BY FR. QUENTIN QUESNELL, S.J.
We already feel like yawning at the opening words when a
preacher begins with “Dearly beloved.” What he says somehow
doesn’t make us feel close to him. We know he’s saying it to
everybody, so we suspect he may mean it for nobody. Instead
of bringing us closer, the expression can make us feel farther
away.
If he calls us “dearly beloved in Christ,” he may only make it
worse. Now it can sound as if he’s setting up a defensive wall in
front of himself. We catch the implication that he may not
think much of us for ourselves, but that, overcoming all natural
repugnance, he manages somehow to love us anyway “in
Christ.”
“Dearly beloved” is, after all, what they call a cliche. A cliche
is just an expression that has become hollow through long
overuse. Before it was a cliche, it was a popular expression that
everyone used because everyone liked it. And before it became
popular, it was an expression that some people used because it
had a real meaning for them and it hit off exactly what they
wanted to say.
The expressions “dearly beloved, loved one, beloved, dear
friends” come up very often in the New Testament writings.
They do not seem to be cliches. True, much of the New
Testament is a collection of old letters, and letters tend to begin
with protestations of friendship. We write “Dear Mr. Jones,”
whether or not we think him very dear.
But the New Testament letter writers also use these words a
lot in reference to others besides the persons they are
addressing. “Tell me about my dear Titus.” “Give my regards to
my beloved Agatha.” “I am sending this through the hands of
my special friend Tychichus.”
The friendship sounds real. The people are saying “dear”
because they like each other. If they add “friend in Christ,” it is
as if Christ simply made them friends twice over - once for
what they were in themselves, once more because of common
love for him.
It is as if new friends in Christ were being discovered, not
created out of nothing. The good qualities were there all long.
Being in Christ only began to show the good qualities to better
advantage.
Their use of “dearly beloved” is full, not empty. The
fulness comes from the fact that they say “beloved” to and
about definite persons whom they know and whom others can
identify. They are not saying “beloved” to everyone to protect
themselves from actually loving anyone. The New Testament
rule is “love your neighbor,” not just love all persons in general
and no persons in particular. Not everybody in the abstract and
nobody in the concrete.
It almost has to be that way to be real. For universal love in
the concrete is physically impossible. If you tried even to say
hello to everyone in the United States, one person after another,
allowing one second per person, working at it night and day,
you couldn’t finish in less than seven years! How long would it
take if you wanted to touch each one’s hand, smile or listen to
their troubles and say a word of encouragement?
God’s solution is that we love someone. There must be
someone in our life (how wonderful if there are several!) whom
we trust and love as our own selves; for whom we would do
anything; to whom we could confide anything; from whom we
would not hesitate to ask everything. If we are not that close to
any one person, there will always be something hollow about
our claims to love all men.
John wrote: “If you don’t love your brother whom you see,
how can you love God, whom you do not see?” If is also true
that if you don’t love any of the people around you, with whom
you have contacts day after day, how can you love all men
everywhere, whom you never do see and never have to live
with?
friends. Jesus shared his last meal with his closest friends. “A
friend in need,” we are told, “is a friend indeed.”
Jesus reveals to us by his life, by his gospel, through tradition,
and through his Church that he is our friend indeed. We, like the
Jews of old, find this good news hard to believe that Jesus, who
is divine, would really want to be friends with the likes of us. In
the second consideration, we find ourselves unworthy and
indeed, even afraid of such friendship, for we know many times
over we will not be true.
What makes it possible to believe in the friendship Jesus
offers each of us? Faith, of course, is a gift from God. But even
grace builds on nature, and even faith presumes a person who is
capable of belief and whose belief will grow.
What makes faith in God’s friendship possible is, of course,
the friendships we experience in the human order. Without
them, God’s friendship can at least be vaguely grasped, because
human experience of friendship can be understood at least
partially.
Jesus once said all men would know we are his disciples in
that we have love for one another. The early Christians were,
indeed, known by this very love, which was inspired by the love
and friendship Jesus showed them. Such is our heritage and our
blessing, to share Jesus’s friendship, to love one another, and in
so doing to be a sign for other men who seek Jesus. Jesus calls
us his friends, a reality rendered understandable through the
experience of human friendship in which Christ’s friendship is
partially realized.
Freeing Power
Of F riendship
BY FR. CARL J. PFEIFER, S.J.
Lisa is six. She and her family recently moved into a new
neighborhood. On her block live ten other children ranging in
age from six to perhaps ten years.
It wasn’t long before the eleven teamed up to play kickball.
Then they turned to bike-riding, swimming, and tadpole
hunting. Lisa was always with the group, participating in the
games, obviously having a good time. But she never spoke.
The other children asked each other why Lisa never said
anything. One by one they got enough courage to ask her older
brothers, “How come your sister never says anything?” Her
brothers answered simply: “She’s shy.”
The children who live next door to Lisa and her family were
the first to notice that she could talk if she wanted to. Through
the window they could watch and hear her talking and laughing
with her family. Outside the house, she never spoke a word.
> X.fid' i -.I >C> t'UJi-Uf'i '
One of the children, Kevin, an eight year old boy, enjoyed
being with Lisa, even though she remained always silent. He
would check to see if she could play before he asked anyone
else. She was fun to be with. She could run as fast as he could,
and she could climb a tree even better than he! He thoroughly
enjoyed her. He did not demand anything more of her. He let
her be. They became friends.
Last week Lisa and Kevin were swinging in their back yard
when she suddenly joined in the song Kevin was singing.
Bursting with excitement, he kept right on singing, acting as if
nothing unusual had happened. She talked to him the rest of the
morning and again when he came back after lunch. She now
talks with him at any time -- but only as long as no one else is
around.
This is a true story, shared with me by one of the families
involved. To me it symbolizes the creative, freeing power of
friendship. Kevin’s enjoyment of Lisa’s company, his obvious
appreciation of her, gradually created enough security in her to
break her barrier of silence.
She spoke with him because she could trust him. He let her
be herself, and she slowly became more fully herself with him.
His respect for her, even though she never spoke, freed her to
speak. His respect for her when she began speaking to him was
that he decided not tell “the other kids” what had happened. It
was a secret precious to him and her. They were friends.
Friendship is one of the richest experiences in life.
Philosophers in ancient Greece and Rome wrote of friendship as
the greatest good a human could enjoy on this earth. Poets of all
ages have sung about the joys, the pleasures, the demands of
true friendship.
The wise sage of the Old Testament, Sirach, also called
Ecclesiasticus, states that “a faithful friend is a sturdy shelter;
he who finds one finds a treasure. A faithful friend is beyond
price, no sum can balance his worth. A faithful friend is a life
saving remedy” (Sir 6:14-16).
If we have experienced true friendship, we know how true
Sirach’s evaluation is. We recognize, too, how typical of
friendship is the experience of Kevin and Lisa. The respectful
trust and sharing that are part of human friendship are creative,
freeing. In the presence of a friend we are more truly ourselves,
we are free to grow and blossom. In a real and symbolic way we
are enabled to speak through a friend’s love.
The experience of friendship opens us to understand the
surprising words of Jesus to us: “You are my friends .. .1 call
you friends” (John 15: 14-15). It can help us recognize that he
really enjoys being with us, accepting us even though we may be
all tied up inside and seemingly unable to respond. He trusts us,
lets us be, stays with us - because he is our friend. His
friendship for us can open us, can free us to grow, enable us to
become more fully ourselves. We can become loveable because
he loves us. Christians speak of this as “grace.”
His friendship can be experienced in the Eucharist as we
receive Holy Communion. It may be felt in quiet moments
before the Blessed Sacrament. But it may also be felt through
the understanding, trust, and affection of our friends. The
freeing power of human friendship is one of the ways Jesus’
friendship touches us. His friendship reached Lisa through
Kevin.
One of the tasks of the religious educator is to enable people
in and through the experience of friendship to recognize the
reality of Jesus’ friendship. “You ARE my friends.”