Week 7 Friday (Year 1)

Readings: Sirach 6.5-17; Psalm 119; Mark 10.1-12

Today's first reading is one of the most beautiful celebrations of friendship in the Bible. A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter, a treasure, beyond price, a life-saving remedy. Aristotle says that nobody can live without friends and Thomas Aquinas knows that one of the best remedies for depression is to talk with a friend.

The psalm is a celebration of God's law which, coming after this priase of friendship, we can take as God spelling out for his friends the terms of the friendship he wants to have with them. We might feel that friendship should be unconditional rather contractual but we all know, and the first reading speaks of this also, that friendship needs to be worked at, it needs to be reciprocal and it needs to respect always the common ground shared between the friends.

Like all human realities, friendship will be tested by the things that happen in the course of a lifetime. Its survival is not guaranteed which is why, as long as it endures, a friendship is a great grace, a gift of God.

No friendship needs these things more than marriage because it is the highest form of friendship found among human beings. This is why, from all the relationships of love, friendship and companionship that we experience, it is marriage that serves best as an image of God's friendship with his people, of Christ's friendship with his body, the Church, the community of his disciples. It is why marriage is a sacrament of the Church.

The friend who is a treasure and a life-saving remedy is the one who is faithful. This means persevering through thick and thin, staying with the friend no matter what comes along. Once again it requires reciprocity, that my friend will be ready to engage with me in doing what is needed to keep our friendship alive: taking initiatives, being patient, listening well, revisiting often the common ground on which the friendship is built.

And no ground of friendship is better than a shared love of Christ. One of the great theologians of friendship, Aelred of Rievaulx, says that there are always three in a faithful friendship, the two friends and Christ who holds them together. So too for marriage, as for any enduring friendship.

Let us pray for our friends today and thank God for the faithful friendships he has given us. Let us remember friends who have drifted away or from whom we have drifted away, thanking God for what we once meant for each other and praying for their health and their happiness.