Becoming Friends

J. Wadell Paul

Description

How do Christians understand friendship and intimacy? How does worship form Christians into a community of the friends of God? What virtues does God call us to incorporate into our lives? In Becoming Friends, Paul Wadell explores the connections between worship, justice, friendship, and the life we are called to live.This engaging and accessible book offers a fresh viewpoint from which to explore the nature of Christian friendship. Such friendship, Wadell contends, is more than a bonding of people with similar interests, a "ritual of hopeless consolation." True Christian friendship summons us to love all of our neighbors. Wadell examines obstacles to and characteristics of true friendship and, drawing from the works of Augustine, Aelred of Rievaulx, and other Christian exemplars, contends that we are called to serve God through friendship and that this calling requires us to cultivate certain virtues--especially hope, justice, and forgiveness. Becoming Friends offers a provocative look into the nature and importance of true Christian friendship. Anyone looking to reflect on the indispensable role of good friendships in the Christian life will find this a hopeful and encouraging book.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2002
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781585585861
• Langue: English

Extrait

© 2002 by Paul J. Wadell
Published by Brazos Press a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.brazospress.com
Ebook edition created 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means for example, electronic, photocopy, recording without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-58558-586-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Scripture is taken from the New American Bible. Copyright © 1970, 1986, and 1991 by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. 20017 and is used by permission of the copyright owner. All rights reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
To Carmella
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
1. Worshiping Dangerously
The Risky Business of Becoming Friends of God
2. Exploring the Mysteries of Intimacy
What Hinders and What Helps the Friendships of Our Lives
3. Why There Are Some Debts We Can Never Repay
The Good Things Good Friends Do for Us
4. Confronting the Riddles of Intimacy
Augustine on Friendship in the Christian Life
5. What Medieval Monks Can Do for Us
Aelred of Rievaulx and the Life of Spiritual Friendship
6. Astounding Them by Our Way of Life
What Friends of God Can Offer the World
7. Setting the World on Fire
Friendship with God and a Commitment to Justice
8. Not Letting Hurt Have the Final Word
Friendship and the Practice of Forgiveness
Notes
Introduction
Every book is born somewhere, and I would trace the origin of this one to a library carrel at the University of Notre Dame. Many years ago I was a graduate student there, and it was while preparing for my doctoral exams that I became friends with the great Catholic theologian of the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas. It may seem strange to claim as one of your best friends a man who has been dead for over seven hundred years, but believe me, I spent more time with Aquinas in the pages of his Summa Theologiae those days than I did with anyone living, and by the time I took the exams felt I knew him well enough to consider him a friend. Of course, it is convenient to claim someone long dead as a friend because he can hardly protest my presumption, but I felt a deep kinship with Aquinas because his understanding of the Christian life made remarkable sense to me.
This was especially true when I read what he said about friendship, particularly friendship with God. The cornerstone of Aquinas’s theological edifice specifically his account of the Christian life is the virtue of charity. That in itself is not surprising since the apostle Paul makes a similar claim in his eloquent panegyric to love in 1 Corinthians 13, but what fascinated me about Aquinas’s treatment of the love called charity is that he described charity as a life of friendship with God. It is such a beautiful, uplifting, and hopeful way to understand the Christian life, and one I found immediately appealing. I wondered what this image might mean for how we think about the church. Could the church best be understood as the community of the friends of God? Is this a fitting image of what the church is called to be?
Still, despite the attractive power of this metaphor, I was uneasy because it risks an elitism that should never characterize the church. For instance, if Christians are the friends of God, what does this say about everybody else? Furthermore, to speak of the church as the community of the friends of God risks the awful temptation of thinking the church must already be perfect and complete, and anyone with an eye half open knows that is hardly true. Nonetheless, despite these misgivings, I was convinced this was not only a very promising way to think about the church but also a fittingly challenging way. To speak of friendship with God can sound so cozy and consoling, as if we are all snuggling up to God; however, there is no riskier vulnerability than to live in friendship with God, because every friendship changes us, because friends have expectations of each other, and because friends are said to be committed to the same things. Suddenly the metaphor was not so comforting because it suggests that any friend of God is called to faithfully embody the ways of God in the world, even to the point of suffering on account of them. There may be grace and glory in being a friend of God, but there is also clearly a cost.
Aquinas suggests this when he speaks of the “effects of charity,” namely the consequences of living in friendship with God. He envisioned charity not only as a singular virtue an individual might possess but also as a communal way of life. For him, friendship with God is not a solitary enterprise but something the baptized are to pursue together. We join the community of the friends of God through baptism, and we nurture and sustain this life through the prayer and practices of the church. Living a life of friendship with God in the community of the baptized is inescapably transformative. It not only gives us a new identity but also makes the church a community of unmistakable character. Aquinas described this character as the “effects of charity” and named these effects joy, peace, mercy, kindness, almsgiving, and fraternal correction. The list is not exhaustive but does emphasize that a life of friendship with God should create a church of distinctive character and witness and, therefore, special responsibilities. At the very least it suggests that people should be able to look to the church and see embodied there genuine joy, peace, mercy, kindness, generosity, hospitality, and a people who are not afraid to be truthful with one another. What a gift the church could be if people really could see these qualities alive in it today.
Aquinas does one more thing that explains the shape of this book. He speaks of the Eucharist as the “sacrament of charity,” the setting in which a life of friendship with God is best learned, nurtured, and celebrated. Again, a nifty image with decisive implications. Aquinas hints that we do not first understand the Christian life and then worship, but that it is only in the liturgy and worship of the church that we can grasp what living in friendship with God means and what it demands of our lives. Theologians often bemoan the separation between liturgy and Christian morality, unsure what the connection might be, but Aquinas points a way by claiming that Christian morality is not only inseparable from worship, it begins there. It is through the prayer and worship of the church that we are initiated into a life of friendship with God and gradually embody the characteristics of a friend of God.
The purpose of this book is not to revisit Aquinas but to probe the implications of his thought for how we understand our Christian lives today and for how we envision what the church ought to be. Following Aquinas, I shall suggest that worship and ethics are indissolubly linked, because it is through the rituals and practices of Christian worship that we discern the shape of the Christian life and begin to acquire the virtues and dispositions that are essential to that life. Put differently, what we think the church should be and how we think Christians ought to live hinge on what we think should happen when we worship. Maybe one of the reasons there are so many conflicting ideas among Christians about what our communal life should be is because we have so many different opinions about what our worship should be. I am Roman Catholic and sometimes wonder what would happen if one Sunday we stopped in the middle of the Eucharist and asked everyone what they thought we were doing and why we were doing it. I suspect the responses to these questions might be quite different, even incompatible. We have conflicting ideas about what our worship should be, and so we have conflicting ideas about what our shared life as Christians should be.
This book may not resolve that dilemma, but hopefully it will offer a promising alternative. Like Aquinas, I propose that the liturgy and worship of the church should form us into a community whose lives truly do give glory and praise to God because our prayer has formed us into the friends of God. Becoming such a community should impact every dimension of our lives, including how we understand all the relationships of our lives. Friendship with God should illumine and guide our friendships with others, giving us important insights about intimacy, about the qualities of good relationships, about being able to distinguish between authentic friendships and counterfeit friendships, about befriending the misfits and strangers who come our way, and perhaps most important, about the purposes of the best relationships of our lives. Thus, the opening chapter of the book will explore the role of liturgy and worship in tutoring us in the practices of friendship with God. Chapters 2 and 3 will look at some common obstacles and barriers to intimacy and friendship, the qualities of authentic friendship, and some of the many good things that good friends do for us. The fourth and fifth chapters will offer a theological analysis of friendship by considering how Christians should think about friendship and how they should understand its place in the Christian life, especially in a life of discipleship with Christ.
All of this is certainly important, but friendship with God cannot be confined to those near and dear to us. If the church is to be a community of the friends of God, it must reach out to others through the witness and practice of certain virtues. There are many ways the church is called to continue the mission and ministry of Jesus, but one of