Ever since Sal Lema asked for this essay, I have been making notes and looking for time to put my thoughts together. Free moments over the Easter Triduum have prompted me to begin. This celebration of the dying and rising of Jesus Christ brings to mind the words of Jesus that elevated friendship to a whole new reality: “I do not call you servants any longer…I have called you friends.” (John 15:13) Friendship had a new day; in fact, I shall claim that friendship is a sacrament and that friendship with God has a special significance for the Carmelite family. Differing times have understood friendship in new ways and various eras have added new wisdom about friendship. Limited space here allows me to sample some of this wisdom from the ages as background to the significant contribution that the Carmelite tradition has made to friendship. We moderns tend to take for granted the very real joys of friendship. Yet, friends matter psychologically, morally and spiritually; friendship not only brings joy but calls for sharing, fidelity and a common commitment to seek the good of the other. Our spiritual journey is not the race of a lonely long distance runner. As the philosopher Blaise Pascal said, “ There is no such thing as a Christian” (understanding that a Christian, to be Christian, is in community) so too, there is no such thing as a Carmelite The journey is best made with friends.

The Ancient World

Greek and Roman antiquity valued friendship and has given to posterity much wisdom about friendship. From Homer we hear about hospitality as friendship extended to guests. Plato waxed eloquent about the heights to which friendship calls one. Aristotle passed on the most enduring wisdom about friendship; he dedicated two whole books of his Nicomachean Ethics to a discussion of friendship, or as he called it philía. Aristotle is convinced that no one wants to live without friends, and he sees in true friendship the mutuality and equality that have become hallmarks of friendship. For Aristotle a friend wills good for the sake of the other. Aristotle decries what we would call the privatization of friendship; for him friendship creates, benefits and brings cohesion to community. Absent unfortunately from Roman and Greek antiquity is reflection on friendship among women; yet, Aristotle sees the good that friendship between partners brings to marriage. Cicero who penned a tract on friendship that had a far-reaching impact on Christian thinking defines friendship as “nothing else than accord in all things, human and divine, conjoined with mutual goodwill and affection.” The ancient world and many since then see a friend as another self, as half of one’s soul.

Friendship in the Bible

The explicit theme of friendship is not as frequent in the bible as it is in Greek antiquity. Yet, love is an ubiquitous theme in the bible, and the notion of covenant in the bible has kinship with friendship. Israel is the “offspring of Abraham, my friend.” (Isiah 41.8), and “the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.” (Exodus 33:11) We shall return to this notion of friendship with God. There are in the Hebrew Scriptures beautiful stories of friendship. Remember Ruth who befriends her mother-in-law and speaks these lovely lines to Naomi: “Where you go, I will go, where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God, Where you die, I will die—there will I be buried.” (Ruth 1: 16) Recall too the unforgettable friendship between David and Jonathan. David says: “I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan: greatly beloved were you to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.” (2 Samuel 1: 26) Friendship is not often explicit in the Christian scriptures, but love, that we shall see is “a kind of friendship,” is at the heart of the good news of Jesus.

Patristic Era

John Cassian (c.360-c.435) was a major influence, besides scripture, on medieval Carmelite spirituality until Teresa and John introduced Carmelites to the Song of Songs tradition. Cassian’s Conference 16 is a report by Abba Joseph on the meaning of friendship for monks. Abba Joseph speaks of “spiritual brotherhood,” “the cords of friendship,” of the “most precious love of a brother,” and of “the grace of friendship.” For Abba Joseph friendship grows as friends grow in virtue.

Augustine of Hippo, a contemporary of Cassian, deeply appreciated the gift of friendship and he sought to surround himself with friends. From antiquity Augustine discovered that one learns best when one studies with friends, a shared journey to wisdom. Augustine in his Confessions lists the joys of friendship: “to make conversation, to share a joke, to perform mutual acts of kindness, to read together well-written books, to share in trifling and in serious matters, to disagree though without animosity.. and in the very rarity of disagreement to find the salt of normal harmony, to teach each other something or to learn from one another, to long with impatience for those absent, to welcome them with gladness on their arrival.” (4.8.13) In The City of God Augustine writes: “what consolation have we…except the unfeigned faith and mutual affections of genuine, loyal friends?” (19. 8)

The Middle Ages

With his book Spiritual Friendship the Cistercian Aelred of Rievaulx has left an indelible mark on the Christian tradition of friendship. Friendship, for Aelred, is a path to God and includes Christ as a partner in friendship and, in fact, friendship is a preparation for the direct experience of God. Aelred makes this powerful suggestion: “If God is love, as Saint John teaches, then God is also friendship.”

Thomas Aquinas is a major figure in the development of an understanding of friendship. Aquinas did not write a treatise on friendship, but the theme of friendship is woven throughout his writings. At the time he was writing about love/caritas in the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas was commenting on Aristotle on friendship. But, Aquinas took Aristotle where the philosopher could not go— friendship with God. The Dominican friar says that love/caritas is friendship with God. This friendship is marked by loving God for God’s sake, and it is a mutual love in which each “friend is a friend to one’s friend.” But how can God, who is so beyond human nature, be a mutual partner, a friend with God? Thomas says that the Incarnation, God become human, enables human persons to be God’s friend, thereby participating in the life of the Triune God.

Like Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas sees friendship as a crucial element in the formation of community: “We see that among brothers and friends…all things are common: house, table, etc.” Says Thomas: “Given that it is the Holy Spirit who renders us friends of God, it is normal that it would be he who constitutes us as contempla-tors of God.” Thomas believes that to be happy one needs friends and that in the life to come we shall enjoy the ultimate in friendship with God when we are face to face with God. In eternity friendship with fellow heavenly citizens will be friends in a very new way. With friends in this life we flourish humanly, with God and our heavenly friends we shall flourish eternally.

Carmelite Contribution

Te resa of Jesus and John of the Cross have made extraordinary contributions to Carmelite spirituality, in fact, to all Christian spirituality. Not least of all was their introduction into the Carmelite tradition of bridal or nuptial mysticism with roots in the Song of Songs. Some have suggested that nuptial mysticism cannot flourish in our sex-soaked culture. Elsewhere I have responded to this criticism. (Studies in Spirituality 16 (2006), 131-150) While nuptial mysticism is their principal mode of expression, Teresa and John have made substantial contributions to a spirituality of friendship which they weave smoothly and effortlessly into the fabric of nuptial spirituality.

Teresa, first of all, was a woman of great affection who made friends easily. Even as a reader at our remote time, one feels the warmth of Teresa’s personality as one reads her texts. Ask Jerome Gracián what a faithful friend she can be. Teresa thought that her reform required small communities for the sake of contemplation; in the beginning she wanted no more than thirteen. About these small communities, she writes, “all must be friends, all must be loved, all must be held dear, all must be helped.” (Way of Perfection, 4.7) Teresa prizes friendship with Christ: “All my longing was and still is that since He has so many enemies and so few friends that these friends be good ones.” (1.2) Teresa like Aquinas sees the Incarnation as the ground for friendship with God: “I also wondered whether she (the bride) was asking for that union so great that God became man, for that friendship that he effected with the human race.” (On The Song of Songs, 1.10) Into the context of friendship Teresa famously describes what contemplative prayer: “For mental prayer in my opinion is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us.” (Life 8.5)

Friendship is a common theme for John of the Cross who weaves nuptial spirituality and friendship into a seamless tapestry of intimacy with God: John tells a directee: “Take God for your bridegroom and friend.” (Saying #68) He describes dark night contemplation as the “great sweetness of peace and loving friendship with God.” (N 2.7.4) Bold indeed is John’s portrayal of spiritual marriage where God bestows a certain equality on God’s friend: “Since the soul in this state possesses perfect love, she is called the bride of the Son of God, which signifies equality with him. In this equality of friendship the possessions of both are held in common, as the Bridegroom himself said to his disciples. I have now called you my friends, because all that I have heard from my Father I have manifested to you. (Jn. 15:15)” (CB 28.1) John of the Cross says that the grace of baptism is the very same grace as contemplation. For John this contemplation is both a nuptial union and an indescribable friendship that is a vignette of the destiny of those called to allegiance to Jesus Christ—a destiny that culminates in intimacy with the Triune God. Friendship exists first in the Triune God and is reflected in human friendships.

Limited space does not allow further exploration of the gift of human and divine friendship. But, to carry on this exploration one needs only meditate on the passion of Jesus who himself said: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13) John of the Cross adds: “be a friend of the Passion of Christ.”A Carmelite whom many readers will have known and admired, Kilian J. Healy, published in 1999 Awakening Your Soul to the Presence of God. Father Kilian added this subtitle How to Walk with Him Daily and Dwell in Friendship with Him Forever.

Few joys are like the joys of friendship, and no joy can compare with the bliss of eternal friendship with God. It was not until the twelfth century that theologians worked out a full understanding of the seven sacraments. Before that time the word sacrament had a broader meaning: an event in which the saving love of God is manifest. Friendship is an event, in which Christ is a partner. It is a commitment to the source of all goodness, the God who comes to us in scripture, in the Eucharist and in the encounter with the hungry, the thirsty, the homeless, the naked, the ill and the imprisoned. The world-renown scripture scholar, Carmelite Father Roland Murphy concludes his commentary on The Song of Songs with these words: “the love that forms human partnership and community, and that sustains the whole of creation, is a gift of God’s own self. But the biblical poet should have the last words… Eat, friends, drink! Drink deeply of love!” (105) Friendship, human and divine, calls for a celebration of the God who is love, a celebration of friends that we call Eucharist.