XXVI — LOVE OF FRIENDSHIP

Presence of God. — O Lord, may I live fully in your divine friendship.

Meditation

1 — The highest expression of human love is friendship; and St. Thomas teaches that charity is precisely love of friendship between man and God. Friendship, however, requires a certain equality, a sharing of life and goods; it requires reciprocity of affection, mutual benevolence. But what equality and sharing of life can exist between the creature, who is nothing, and God, who is the supreme Being? From the natural point of view, none. Yet God has willed to raise the creature to the supernatural state, communicating to it a participation in his nature and in his divine life. It is true: though divinized by grace, man always remains creature and God always remains inaccessible and transcendent Being. Nevertheless, in his infinite love, He has found the way to raise man to the level of his divine life. The first fruit of God’s love for us is precisely this form of equality, this sharing of life, which by grace He has willed to establish between us and Him. God has therefore loved us first, not only with his love as Creator, by which He gave us existence, but also with his love as Father, by which He made us participants in his divine life.

“Love finds or makes lovers equal”; and thus God has loved us to the point of making us like Himself, so that He might admit us into the circle of his divine friendship, that friendship which exists in the bosom of the Trinity among the three divine Persons. More than this: as a friend desires to live with his friend and always seeks his presence and nearness, so God has willed to make Himself so near and so intimate to us as to come and make his dwelling in our souls: “we will come to him and make our abode with him” (Jn. 14:23). What greater sharing of life between us and God than this continual society with the divine Persons who dwell in our soul and with whom, by charity, we can enter into true relations of friendship?

2 — Friendship requires reciprocity of love. God has loved us first with his love of friendship: God first loved us and, loving us, infused into us grace and charity by which He made us capable of returning his love. We shall return God’s love not with our natural, human love — which would be insufficient for that purpose — but with the love of charity which the Holy Spirit has poured into our hearts and which is a participation in that infinite love with which God loves Himself. God infuses this most precious gift into us, and we must receive it with a pure and free heart, in order to adhere to it with all the strength of our will and affection.

As God, by offering us his friendship, made us like Himself by transforming our being from natural to supernatural, so we, in order to respond to his friendship, must seek to make ourselves like Him by transforming our will into his. True friendship brings sharing of thoughts, will, affections, desires, interests. The true friend makes his friend’s interests and wishes his own, thinks as he does, loves what he loves, wills what he wills. Thus must we act toward God, if we wish truly to live as his friends. Jesus Himself said: “You are my friends if you do what I command you” and “if anyone loves me, he will keep my word” (Jn. 15:14; 14:23). On our part, therefore, friendship with God, that is, charity, requires a continual tendency to conform our thoughts, wills, and desires to the thought and will of the divine Friend. Our friendship with God will be perfect when there is no longer in us anything that opposes the divine desires and wills, but we are in all things conformed to them; then our union with Him will also be perfect. “The state of divine union consists precisely in having the soul’s will wholly transformed into God’s will, so that in it there is nothing contrary to the divine will, but all its movements are in every way only God’s will” (St. John of the Cross, Ascent I, 11, 2). Perfect charity, perfect friendship, perfect union with God: behold the goal toward which you must tend, advancing eagerly with the steps of love.

Colloquy

“You know it, my God, that I have never desired anything but to love You alone, and that I aspire to no other glory than this. Your love anticipated me from childhood, grew with me, and now has become an abyss whose depths I cannot fathom. Love draws love: my love rushes toward You and would like to fill the abyss that draws it; but alas, it is not even a drop of dew lost in the ocean. To love You, O Lord, as You love me, I must use your own love; only then do I find rest.

“Love! That is all You ask of us. You have no need of our works, but only of our love... You who did not hesitate to ask the Samaritan woman in alms for a little water. You were thirsty, but in saying, ‘Give me to drink,’ it was the love of your poor creature that You, Creator of the universe, were asking: You were thirsty for love! Oh yes, truly. And today, more than ever, You are thirsty! You meet only ingrates and indifferent hearts among the world’s disciples, and among your own disciples You find very few hearts that abandon themselves without reserve to the tenderness of your infinite love.

“Your merciful love is everywhere unknown, rejected.... Those hearts to whom You would generously give it turn to creatures, begging from their miserable affection of brief moments the happiness they seek, instead of casting themselves into your arms and accepting the delightful flame of your infinite love. O my God, shall this despised love always remain closed in your heart? It seems to me that if You found souls who offered themselves to your love, You would quickly consume them, and You would be happy not to compress the flames of infinite tenderness enclosed in You. O Jesus, grant that I may be that fortunate soul! Consume in the fire of divine love this little victim. Let your love penetrate me, surround me, renew me, purify me at every instant, and leave in my heart no trace of fault” (cf. T.B.G. St. 10, 11, 8).