True Friendship requires wanting what is best for another person!
Wanting what is best for another person requires virtue. The Greek
word for virtue means excellence. The ancient Greek philosophers
insisted that virtues are the highest human good necessary to live the
abundant life. They believed that the virtuous person is one who
through a desire to do what is good and right, have disciplined
themselves to develop habits that consistently direct their desires
and appetites. Being good becomes their way of being. Good thoughts
flow from them into action from their deepest self; good thoughts and
action flow out of them … because of who they are.
This is the purpose for which God has made us! To do what is right at
all times and in all places from our very core, from our own desire
and love … which springs from the love of Him … that is the highest
virtue of all … supernatural charity. Being virtuous and being a true
friend are necessarily connected with each other. They are
practically the same thing. Friendship like great music is a
masterpiece. Friendship is a mutually recognized relationship of
affection that occurs between two or more people who have matured in
virtue to bear good will for each other. Reunion Groups based upon
true friendship are rare because virtuous people are rare.
The most important thing a reunion group based upon true friendship
can do for each other is to help each other walk down the path of
virtue. The more friends develop virtue the more they exercise true
friendship and the more they exercise true friendship the more they
grow in virtue.
A strong, lasting reunion group requires true friendship and true
friendship is only possible to the extent that each person is virtuous
and only to that extent can each person enjoy a share in true
friendship. To the extent that each person fails in virtue they fail
in the ability to have true friendship. It is the virtuous person and
only the virtuous person who really has the ability to desire and
pursue the good of another person. In a reunion groups based upon
true friendship there is something irrepressible about two or more
minds working together, in a context of mutual affection and trust, to
fathom God’s deepest truths. Our friendship with Jesus is our model
of the shared life in reunion. He calls us friends because He was
willing to share with us all that He heard from the Father. “These
things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your
joy may be full.” What a friend we have in Jesus!
Of all the virtues charity is the purest. It is a mutual love between
man and God based upon a shared life. His joy becomes our joy, His
happiness is ours. Sin destroys charity … it turns us away from God,
ourselves and each other.
To say to another, “I want what is best for you,” is one thing. To
mean it is another. And to help him achieve it is still another.
Anyone can say it. It takes some virtue to mean it. It takes much
virtue to do it.